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Frode Haltli
At the age of 7 he started to play the accordion and the next few years Frode won many national competitions and recieved several scholarships and legacies. He was awarded first prize by the professional jury in the televised finals of The Norwegian State Broadcasting's "Talentiaden 1991". He has also recieved prizes at a number of international competitions. In 1999 he won a second prize in the prestigious International Gaudeamus Intepreters Competition in the Netherlands.
Frodecurrently lives in Oslo but he is touring a lot abroad, and has played as a soloist at concerts and festivals in Europe, Russia, America and Asia. He has performed as a soloist with major orchestras, but is also actively working with chamber music: At present it is the trio POING which occupies much of his time. The trio which includes Rolf-Erik Nystrøm on the saxophone and Håkon Thelin on the double bass mainly performes contemporary music. Frode also plays and records with Trygve Seim (ECM) and Norwegian folk music in RUSK with folk singer Unni Løvlid and fiddler Vegar Vårdal.
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Laura Jurd: The Big Friendly Album
by Chris May
The Big Friendly Album is what it is called and that is exactly what it is. London-based trumpeter/cornetist and composer Laura Jurd's fourth album under her own name is a big hearted, gorgeously lyrical, feel-good romp, which does not preclude cerebral engagement but which wears its complexities so lightly that one barely notices them. Jurd last came to the attention of All About Jazz during The Great Pause, with the release of the perfect little masterpiece To ...
read moreSigurd Hole: Roraima
by David Bruggink
Norwegian upright bassist Sigurd Hole has stood out in the recent past as both a contributor (with his elegant performance on Tord Gustavsen's 2018 ECM album, The Other Side) and bandleader (through his 2018 Elvesang album Encounters). His solo explorations are equally noteworthy, as on the wide-ranging double album Lys / Mørke (Elvesang, 2020). Recorded on the remote arctic islands of Fleinvær, he thoughtfully probed the relationship between the high-pitched harmonics and drones of his instrument and the spectral winds ...
read moreVossa Jazz Festival 2019: Jazz Folk Meet by the Lake
by Josef Woodard
Vossa Jazz Festival Voss, Norway April 12-14, 2019 There are bigger fish on the storied and seemingly ever-healthy Norwegian jazz festival circuit than Vossa Jazz, but it has its own brand of soulfulness. The kickoff event on a Nordic festival list including later blowouts in nearby Bergen, Trondheim, Molde, Kongsburg, and Oslo, Vossa Jazz is a deceptive little powerhouse occasion all its own, nestled in the lakeside town and winter ski haven, pop. 15,000, and whose ...
read moreTrygve Seim / Frode Haltli: Yeraz
by Budd Kopman
Yeraz is an intimate, deep and beautiful exploration of both instrumental sound and artistic reactions to many different influences. It must be listened to carefully and patiently, not only because it is performed by a duo--saxophonist Trygve Seim and accordionist Frode Haltli--but because their musical choices are, for the most part, very subtle and carefully developed. It is anyone's guess why the music of mystic G. I. Gurdjieff in particular, and traditional/folk music of the Eastern Mediterranean and ...
read moreFrode Haltli: Passing Images
by Budd Kopman
Frode Haltli does not play accordion, but rather makes music with an instrument that we call an accordion. Using carefully chosen musicians, Haltli has created, with Passing Images, a highly intense, very concentrated work that is both disconcerting and beautiful--something to be slowly savored and pondered. Its fifty-one minutes are full of surprises and shocks. There is little overt musical movement and yet, despite much silence, the listener is pulled ever forward. The overall volume is low ...
read moreFrode Haltli: Passing Images
by John Kelman
Abandoning the contemporary classicism of Looking on Darkness (ECM, 2002), Norwegian accordionist Frode Haltli's Passing Images looks, instead, to traditional Norwegian music for its inspiration. But Haltli, like accordionists Pascal Contet and Guy Klucevsek, stretches the boundaries of his instrument's capabilities--rarely takes things literally. His unfettered musical aesthetic, and the players that he's chosen to work with--trumpeter Arve Henrkisen, violist Garth Knox and singer Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje--make this collection of traditional tunes, original music and free improvisation a lesson ...
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"This is certainly an intriguing and enjoyable collection of contemporary Scandinavian music" --Cahum MacDonald, International Record Review
"The accordion has never - well, hardly ever - had it so good. But forget Piazzolla and Pohjonen, certainly banish thoughts of the tango: This debut solo disc from the Norwegian virtuoso Frode Haltli presents five challenging new works which explore the furthest sonic regions of the instrument." --Hilary Flinch, BBC Music Magazine