The Oslo Jazz Festival 2003 will take place from 11 – 17 August, and the festival can now open up this year’s program for a sneak preview of what’s to come
75 events will unroll at 16 venues during this year’s week-long jazz festival in Oslo, and once again audiences are invited to join a seven-day journey through the history of jazz these late summer days and cool August evenings in Norway’s capital city. With a span from ragtime to electronica the Oslo Jazz Festival’s exceptionally wide range of choice attracts a large audience and has something for all ages and tastes.
The Oslo Jazz Festival proudly presents a unique meeting between a world class master and a young Norwegian comet. The Svend Asmussen Quartet with Ola Kvernberg will open the Oslo Jazz Festival 2003. Svend Asmussen is without a doubt among the world’s foremost jazz musicians, and Ola Kvernberg has enthused both audiences and critics a like since he entered the jazz scene at Oslo’s Django Festival in 2000. This August the two jazz violinists will bridge the generation gap and play all of two concerts in the Oslo Concert Hall.
The Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra will also be part of the festival line up at the Oslo Concert Hall. On this occasion the orchestra has invited Grammy-winner Vince Mendoza who will be joined by international stars Joe Lovano on saxophone and John Abercrombie on guitar. Composer and arranger Vince Mendoza is in a class of his own and has worked with a number of the greatest jazz musicians around today such as Pat Metheny, Michael Brecker, Charlie Haden and John Scofield. Hans Vroomans (piano), Mats Danielsson (bass) and Martijn Vink (drums) will also contribute to giving the audience an experience which will not be easily forgotten.
Joe Lovano will also appear at Kulturkirken Jacob with the amazingly talented Norwegian trio Håvard Wiik (piano), Ingebrigt Håker Flaten (bass) and Paal Nilssen-Love (drums).
The imaginative British jazz musician Django Bates will perform during the festival with his band Human Chain. Jazzpar Prize winner Bates is known from Delightful Precipice and his work with Norwegian singer Sidsel Endresen. Joining him in the band are Iain Bellamy on saxophones, Michael Mondesir on bass and Martin France on drums. Human Chain present spontaneous, intense jazz with humour and quality. The audience is invited to enjoy the moment at the Oslo nightspot Smuget.
Jan Lundgren Trio are among Scandinavia’s finest jazz trios, and this year we welcome the very popular trio back to Oslo with their own brand of atmospheric and melodic jazz. In addition to Jan Lundgren on piano, Mattias Svensson (Viktoria Tolstoy) plays bass and Morten Lund (Scandinavian Summit) plays drums in this trio which will give all of two concerts during the festival. The musician’s musician Herb Geller (saxophones) will join the trio for the second concert. Geller has roots in the American West Coast Scene and has played with a long line of great names in jazz such as Chet Baker, Max Roach and Dinah Washington.
A new dream trio of international format will take the stage at Scene West Victoria at this year’s festival. We have the pleasure of presenting Denmark’s marvellous pianist Carsten Dahl, Norway’s own star bassist Arild Andersen and top French drummer Patrice Heral (Vienna Art Ensemble). The music is written by Dahl and Andersen or by the trio as a whole. This is modern, intense music bringing both musician and audience into atmospheric landscapes of rhythmic art music speckled with elements from world music.
We are delighted to welcome Jazzpar Prize winner Marilyn Mazur to Smuget during the festival with her drum ensemble Percussion Paradise comprising Lisbeth Diers, Benita Haastrup and Birgit Løkke as well as Sweden’s young vocal talent Josefine Cronholm. This project offers a colourful landscape of improvisation, rhythm and vocals. Mazur is among the world’s foremost percussionists having worked with Miles Davis and having enjoyed a longstanding collaboration with Jan Garbarek. We anticipate many surprises covering everything from lyrical caresses to energetic outbursts.
Marilyn Mazur will also appear at John Dee with the Eastern Norwegian regional jazz ensemble Norske Store. Here Mazur and Norske Store will further develop a collaboration which was established during Norway’s Big Band Festival in 2001. The wonderfully talented Norwegian pianist Olga Konkova has been commissioned to write a piece for this concert which will offer music in a big band format with a sound that exceeds this format’s traditional boundaries and takes us into the future.
At Oslo’s very popular club Blå we have set up a meeting between Atomic and School Days with Ken Vandermark, Frederik Ljungkvist, Jeb Bishop, Magnus Broo, Kjell Nordeson, Håvard Wiik, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and Paal Nilssen-Love. A meeting between these two bands is not an unexpected event. In addition to sharing the same rhythm section, the bands share a number of common features. There are similarities in their musical expression, and they share the same sources of inspiration and a common perception of music, interplay and improvisation. School Days and Atomic will inspire each other and at the same time stand firm in their own musical traditions. The music will be powerful and energetic with collective improvisation as well as smaller settings such as trio, duo and solo.
Blues has a natural place at the Oslo Jazz Festival, and this year the incredibly successful Amund Maarud Band will be among the bands playing the blues for audiences at Gamla. Amund Maarud (21) has without a doubt a promising carrier as a blues musician ahead of him, and this band mainly play tunes with lyrics and music by the young man himself. The band delivers direct, raw blues, and after having had the pleasure of hearing Amund Maarud Band once, you just want more.
The Oslo Jazz Festival continues its collaboration with the Norwegian oil company Statoil based on a commitment to working with young jazz talents. This year we have invited a Swedish master of genuine twenties and thirties jazz, Bent Persson, to work with Borg Hot Jazz, and the unbelievably talented American jazz musician, Jon Gordon, to work with Subtonic. These projects will naturally result in concerts during the course of the festival.
The complete programme and tickets for all of this year’s concerts will be available from Monday 28 April. Stay up to date on
www.oslojazz.no. See
www.billettsevice.no or call 815 33 133 for tickets.
Please feel free to contact the festival office on +47 22 42 91 20 or at
info@oslojazz.no for more information.
Oslo Jazz Festival 11 - 17 August 2003
Tollbugt. 28, N-0157 Oslo, Norway
Tel: +47 22 42 91 20/Mobil: +47 992 27 089/Fax: +47 22 42 91 25
E-mail:
info@oslojazz.no/Internet:
www.oslojazz.no
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