Jazz in Norway

[Sand]

Free jazz in Norway

[Sand]

Louis must have been a main influence on Norwegian jazz, and a couple of years later this guy arrived on the scene:

[alankin]

Who he?

[Sand]

Originally posted by alankin
Who he?

He who played on "I love it when you snore".

[yardbird]

This might be a little obscure for non-norwegians, but the drummer is Paal Nilssen Love, and the trumpet player with Louis Armstrong is Alfred Maurstad (who actually played hardangerfiddle, but switched horns with Armstrong on this occasion).

[Sand]

Yeah, Alfred Maurstad - the Bill Clinton of hardingfele players - is definitely an obscure player for most of the posters here.

[Sand]

Another drummer, Jon Christensen, who is "Big in Poland", did a birthday interview a few days ago. Actually, the interview was done by another drummer, Mr. Ellingsen http://www.ballade.no

Anyway, Christensen did offer insighs about his playing; his technique and his music.

I’ll concentrate on stories like this one:

- I played very much on the European continent during the seventies. I just went home for change of clothes, then it was on the road again. In fact, the activity reached a level where I started to receive threats from the wives (!) of German drummers after concerts. I received mysterious phone calls and angry letters, because I played that much in Germany, and because - as they saw it – stole work from their husbands...
http://www.ballade.no

[Sand]

The first few posts here pretty much give you the essentials about the Norwegian scene. I'll move on to current events.

It's great news that Martial Solal will be playing in the Munch Museum in Oslo on March 25. He'll be playing with Jon Christensen and Arild Andersen.

I was too young to go to the Munch Museum , when Bill Evans Trio did a concert there in 1966. This time I'll be there.

[Sand]

Didn't know about about http://www.jazzinoslo.no/english.htm

but I knew this guy was playing:

[Dennis Gonzalez]

I've not seen Arild Andersen or Jon Christensen since my Norwegian gigs at Voss and in Oslo - 1992! And never Martial Solal!

[Tom K]

I've just ordered a CD by a Norwegian group called ATOMIC. I heard a sample track a while ago, and now I can't wait to hear the rest.

[yardbird]

It's a Swedish/Norwegian group actually - and a terrific one - heard them live last year.

[Sand]

Once this was an image-heavy thread. I may restore it, but I think I'll concentrate on one picture Dennis Gonzalez uploaded, and that I saved to my harddisk.

It's a memory, I believe, of the time Dennis recorded "Welcome To Us" with trumpeter Nils Petter Molvaer, bass player Terje GeWelt, drummer Pal Thowsen and vocalist Sidsel Endresen .
Dennis appeared on the front page of the daily "Klassekampen" (The Class Struggle).

Dennis, I wonder what would have happened, if this recording had been generally available to the fans of Nils Petter and Sidsel through the last 6 years?
As this is not the case, it would be of interest for jazz fans in the Oslo region, if it were available at the music department at the public library in Oslo (Deichman). If someone donated an original copy, it would be made available along with 18.000 other CDs (about 3000 jazz CDs).
Here's the email I found on their site musikkavd@deich.folkebibl.no

"Molvær, Nils Petter" in the forfatter/person field yielded 31 hits

Dennis comment on "Ask Dennis Gonzalez":

Actually, ...... the photo (was) from a story in Klassekampen that explores my relationship to Norwegian jazz. I was interviewed during VossaJazz when I was there with my New Dallas Quartet (rec. "Stefan" on Silkheart Records: John Purcell - reeds / Henry Franklin - bass / W.A. Richardson - drums / D. Gonzalez - trumpets). It was during this trip that I met my Norwegian heroes: Rypdal, Christensen, Andersen; and my colleagues on the Norwegian scene: Molvaer, Endresen, Wesseltoft; with whom I recorded a year later the CD for Gowi and Koch Jazz "Welcome to Us".

[Sand]

Essay by Michael Tucker published in Avant Magazine and on the web by ballade.no

naSections


The snowball effect - part 1
14.10.2002
In this first instalment in a series of three, UK-based journalist Michael Tucker presents his Rough guide to (New) Norwegian Music. This excellent article, which was first published in respected Avant Magazine, gives the reader a comprehensive look into four decades of Norwegian jazz and contemporary music.
One of the many things that, time and again, continue to draw me back to Norway – the non-EEC country that Jeremy Irons once called Europe's best kept secret – is the quality of the music being made there. Last year, I was fortunate enough to spend a week or so at the Molde Festival on the west coast of the country, where the guest festival artist was Pat Metheny. Over the week, Metheny appeared in a rich range of contexts with Norwegian musicians, including a shape shifting big band featuring superb arrangements by pianist Erlend Skomsvoll and spirited vocals from Live Maria Roggen, a fusion meeting with pianist Jan Gunnar Hoff and saxophonist Tore Brunborg, a free-ish encounter with the young saxophonist Håkon Kornstad and his hot power-play trio and a delicately woven set of standards and originals with singer Silje Nergaard – the latest in a long line of fine Norwegian vocalists which stretches back through Sidsel Endresen, Kari Bremnes and (the late)
Radka Toneff to Laila Dalseth and Karin Krog. Throughout, it was obvious that Metheny relished the quality of the musicianship he encountered, which (for me at least) reached its absolute peak in the two trio performances Metheny gave with bassist Arild Andersen and drummer Paal Nilssen Love.

With these two musicians, Metheny encountered the origins and the ongoing power of up-to-the-minute Norwegian music. Andersen is famous for both the role he played in the Jan Garbarek Quartet of the late 1960s and early 1970s and his co-leadership with the drummer from that quartet, the great Jon Christensen of the Masqualero quintet which featured saxophonist Tore Brunborg, trumpeter Nils Petter Molvær and pianist Jon Balke, and which cut its first album for the Norwegian Odin label in 1983 before later making several albums for ECM. Drummer Paal Nilssen Love is currently establishing a reputation for himself as perhaps the hottest new thing in contemporary Norwegian jazz, with appearances on such committed new labels as Turn Left Productions, SOFA and keyboardist and producer Bugge Wesseltoft's Jazzland.

Ten years that both separate and join Andersen and Love have seen Norway produce an extraordinary diversity of high-quality music ranging from the sort of quintessential Nordic lyricism (and writing for strings) evident on an ECM release like Andersen's Hyperborean to the far more American overtones of the free flowing improvisations recorded by saxophonist Frode Gjerstad with bassist William Parker and drummer Hamid Drake at Oslo's Ultima Contemporary Music Festival in 1997. In between these extremes, Norwegian musicians have both covered and created a good many of the angles that constitute the space that is contemporary music. The purpose of what follows is to offer a rough guide to some of the more important of such angles, concentrating on jazz-related or improvised music but with some coverage also of so-called classical or "serious"/composed music. There is no attempt to be comprehensive: I simply hope that what follows will alert the curious listener to a little more of the wealth that is both contemporary Norwegian music and its history than that listener may have been aware of before.

Just as Edvard Munch is the artist most likely to spring to mind when non-Norwegians are asked to name an important Norwegian painter, so have two distant but related figures come to dominate popular European awareness of on Norwegian music form the past century or so: the classical composer Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) and the jazz inflected improviser Jan Garbarek (born 1947).

Great as Munch is, any enthusiast who visits the painter's home city of Oslo should quickly learn to value the many qualities in the painting of such contemporaries of Munch's as Harald Sohlberg and Ludwig Karsten, Halfdan Egedius, Nikolai Astrup and Harriet Backer. And given the quality of the various galleries and museums in Oslo, such an enthusiast should quickly become aware of the richness and diversity of Norwegian painting and graphic art in the decades that have passed since Much's death in 1944 – a richness and diversity indicated by such names as those of Johs Rian, Inger Sitter and Jakob Weidemann in the field of abstract art. and Kai Fjell, Ludwig Eikaas and Frans Widerberg in the parallel world of figurative art. Similarly, exceptional figures as Grieg and Garbarek are, anyone who responds to the mixture of transformed folk sources and chromatic sophistication in their work should find congruent pleasure and stimulation in a wide range of further – and often very different - Norwegian music, from both the so-called "classical/serious" and "jazz" worlds.

As with all forays (however brief) into the worlds of art and music, some knowledge of the past may be a useful complement to any investigation of the present. In what follows, there are some thumb-nail sketches of some of the chief figures in post-Grieg, pre-Garbarek developments, and then a focus on the sort of exploratory work that has made Norwegian music of the past few decades – and today, especially – some of the most exciting in the world.

Two distinctive characters from the Norwegian classical world – Harald Sæverud (1897-1992) and Geirr Tveitt (1908-1981) – summarise a chief theme in Norwegian music, from Grieg to today. Through decade upon decade, especially after the Second World War, Norwegian musical life bore witness to many a debate about whether or not that life should remain focussed upon what was often characterised as a tonally rooted an fold-inflected nationalism of manner, or open itself instead to various post-Schönberg developments (including free tonality, atonality and serialism) of the international scene. The Hardanger-based Tveitt was both an ardent nationalist, who like Grieg was fascinated by the special sound and overtones of the Hardanger fiddle, and a sophisticated neo-classicist. Suffused with the spirit of folk tales, watersprites and sagas, the best introduction to his dance-inflected and melodically rich world is the attractive Suite nr.1 from A Hundred Folktunes form Hardanger distilled by the composer himself from his many hundreds of transcriptions of folk tunes.

While Tveitt's relation to Grieg is clear enough, the Danish composer Carl Nielsen had observed earlier that the music of Harald Sæverud was "as Norwegian as Grieg's, but in its own particular way (Notes to Sæverud Complete Piano Music). Strongly associated with the west-coast city of Bergen – which today enjoys an extremely lively cultural scene, with its Bit 20 Ensenble, in particular, attracting much international attention for recordings such as the 1997 Aurora release Profils by Grieg relative, and multi-faceted composer Edvard Hagerup Bull – Sæverud is known for both an imposing range of large scale orchestral works, including three famous symphonies composed during the Second World War, and a body of music for solo piano which is as characterful, in its own alternately craggy and lyrical was, as that of Grieg.

Many a Norwegian has spoken of the "Norwegianness" of works like Sæverud's Tunes and Dances: the composer himself remarked that while he had never felt any urge to imitate any particular feature of his country's folk music, he had certainly tried to "imbibe the spirit" of that music. Similar remarks would be made later by such noted Norwegian jazz musicians as Garbarek, Christensen and Andersen – with Garbarek drawing upon far-flung Nordic folk material in recordings like the 1980 Eventyr and 1989 Rosensfole and sensing parallels between the folk music of Norwegian valleys and that of the Balkans, Christensen finding much t relish in Sæverud, and Andersen quoting Grieg at the end of his notes to his folk-inspired 1993 release Arv: "Life is like folk music. You never know whether it's in major or minor."

If the work o Sæverud and Tveitt shows how a certain stream of folk-inflected melody, ambiguous tonality and driving rhythm runs deep through much post-Grieg Norwegian music, two very different figures serve to indicate the extent to which that music has been open to avant-garde developments from abroad. Fartein Valen (1887-1952) and Arne Nordheim (born 1931) are the two great initiatory figures of Norwegian internationalism in the world of classical music. The former – whose work has just received welcome fresh exposure on the Rune Grammofon release The Eternal, which includes the classic Valen piece The Churchyard by the Sea – fashioned a flowing, dynamically stimulating world out of a poetically considered use of twelve-tone or serial means. The latter, recently honoured by a special Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs booklet and compilation CD My Longing Is Not My Own: Arne Nordheim 70 Years, has spoken of the "inner intensity" crucial to a composer. This is a quality evident throughout Nordheim's work, whether it be his setting (for soprano voice and chamber ensemble) of three poems from the Swede Pär Lagerkvist's Evening Land collection in the mid-to-late 1950s or the many electronically generated pieces which established his reputation from the late 1960s onwards, and which he developed at the experimental electronic studio housed at the Henie-Onstad Art Centre at Høvikodden, just west of Oslo. Some of these pieces have been revisited recently in two further Rune Grammofon releases: Electric, a compilation of signature electroacoustic pieces such as Solitaire, Warsaw and Colorazione from 1968 and 1970 and Arne Nordheim Transformed, and ambient reworking of several of these works by the contemporary Biosphere/Deathprod ensemble.

Between 1969 and 1971 Nordheim took part in one of the most radical of all Norwegian musical projects. The two-LP Sonet release Popofoni. Recently released as a double CD by Aurora, Popofoni found Nordheim in the company of such fellow Norwegian avant-garde classical composers as Kåre Kolberg and Alfred Janson – plus Norwegian jazz musicians Karin Krog, Garbarek, Terje Rypdal, Andersen and Christensen. Norwegian jazz pianist-turned-classical composer Gunnar Sønstevold and Swedish jazz pianist Bobo Stenson were also present on a release which represents a defining moment in recent Norwegian musical history – and which I discuss at some length in my Jan Garbarek: Deep Song (Hull 1998). The record's various blends of avant-garde composition and jazz improvisation, romantic poetry and political protest, Western Expressionism and Eastern-oriented reverie introduced a good deal of the spirit of both cross-genre and cross-cultural openness which has increasingly come to characterise much of the best Norwegian music of today.

In any account of new Norwegian music of the past decades, the names of Krog, Garbarek, Rypdal, Andersen and Christensen have to feature at least as prominently as those of Arne Nordheim, Kåre Kolberg and Alfred Janson. For these are the key figures who took Norwegian jazz, folk- and classically inflected music to previously unsuspected levels of poetic expression: of both individual and group virtuosity and national and international visibility. Of course, there had been excellent Norwegian jazz musicians before. In fact, so good was the quality of modern mainstream players like trumpeter Rowland Greenberg and saxophonists Bjarne Nerem, Arvid Grahm Paulsen, Kristian Bergheim and Mikkel Flagstad that the period 1955-1965 is often referred to as the first "golden age" of Norwegian jazz. (Bjarne Nerem's full-toned, somewhat cool-school excellence can be sampled on a number of recent CDs, such as the 1948-1981 selections of the 1991 How Long Has This Been Going On and the later music of the 1984 This Is Always, both on Gemini; and it's well worth searching the second-hand shops for the 1998 limited edition boxed three-LP set, presented by the Oslo Jazz Circle and Herman Records, which showcases Paulsen, Bergeim and Flagstad in the company of Greenberg and other Norwegian notables of the swinging mainstream scene of the late 1950s and early-to-late 1960s.

The next instalment will follow next week.
Text: Michael Tucker
Related companies:

Avant Magazine
Related articles:

The snowball effect - part

Radka Toneff
]

[Sand]

Sections

The snowball effect - part 2
21.10.2002
In this second instalment in a series of three, UK-based journalist Michael Tucker presents his Rough guide to (New) Norwegian Music. This excellent article, which was first published in respected Avant Magazine, gives the reader a comprehensive look into four decades of Norwegian jazz and contemporary music.
What Karin Krog and the often-thus-titled "Big Four" of Garbarek (pictured), Rypdal, Andersen and Christensen did was to create a second "golden age" of Norwegian jazz, this time with the accent very much on cross-genre experimentation, but with plenty of room also for that "songbird lyricism" (the phrase is Steve Lake's) that would in years to come become increasingly characteristic of the music of Garbarek in particular. As is well known today, apart from the musicians themselves, two figures were crucial to this second golden age. One was the American George Russell, who lived in Oslo in the mid-1960s and whose ideas concerning both pan-tonal and pan-rhythmic music fuelled the early - and meteoric – development of the so-called "Big Four". The other was German producer Manfred Eicher, whose early ECM recordings with Norwegian engineer Jan Erik Kongshaug in Oslo did so much to alert the wider world to the quality of not just Norwegian contemporary jazz, but Nordic jazz as a whole. Featuring Garbarek and Christensen together with Keith Jarrett and Swedish bassist Palle Danielsson, recordings like the 1974 Belonging and 1977 My Song have justly entered jazz legend as some of the finest music of the past quarter of a century.

The Danish trumpeter Palle Mikkelborg once suggested to me that Oslo was the perfect place for Manfred Eicher to produce not only such recordings but also the earlier, more rock-inflected work of Terje Rypdal and such later cross-genre projects as the 1979 Descendre, which featured Rypdal, Mikkelborg and Christensen. Mikkelborg's point was that, although there had indeed been some fine modern mainstream players in Norway, the bebop tradition had never taken root there with anything like the force that it did elsewhere in Scandinavia. So, Oslo was open ground for a producer – and musicians – with open ears.

The Norwegian musicians whom Manfred Eicher has recorded for ECM are (mostly) known world-wide today. And the (disciplined) openness of attitude that has characterised so many ECM productions with these musicians has continued right up to today, as evinced by such a diverse group of (largely Norwegian) ECM records as the 1993 Water Stories by pianist Kjetil Bjørnstad, the 1994 Nordic Quartet recording by Karin Krog, John Surman, Terje Rypdal and Vigleik Storaas, the 1996 Visible World by Jan Grabarek and Hyperborean by Arild Andersen, 1997 Khmer by trumpeter Nils-Petter Molvær, 1999 Serenity by the Bobo Steson Trio (with Swedish bassist Anders Jormin and Jon Christensen) and the 1998-99 Different Rivers suite by Norwegian saxophonist Trygve Seim (a superb trans-energised Birh of the Cool felling to it, and which I was fortunate enough to hear live at the Molde Jazz festival last year). Before investigating how that openness of attitude is also characteristic of other, Norwegian-based labels today – such as Erik Hillestad's Kirkelig Kulturverksted, Karl Seglem's NOR and Bugge Wesseltofts's Jazzland – it is worth pointing out that, exemplary as ECM has been in its documenting of Norwegian jazz, plenty of other musicians who have not been recorded by ECM made a significant contribution to that second "goden age" of Norwegian jazz which began in the mid-to-late 1960s and continued throughout the 1970s.

Four of the most beautiful of all Norwegian jazz records were released in the latter half of the 1970s: the 1975 Soturnudi by the Guttorm Guttormsen Quartet, with Guttormsen (saxes), Brynjulf Blix (piano), Carl Morten Iversen (bass) and Espen Rud (drums); the 1978 Til Jorden (To the Earth), which featured poet Rolf Jacobsen reading his work to music composed by pianist Egil Kapstad, with bassist Bjørn Alterhaug and saxophonist Bjørn Johansen together with Karin Krog in the accompanying ensemble; Moments, also of 1978, which found various musicians, including ex-Jan Garbarek Group pianist Terje Bjørklund and saxophonist John Pål Inderberg in a largish ensemble (including another excellent pianist Per Husby) interpreting eleven lyrically-charged compositions by bassist Alterhaug, and the 1979 Albufeira, with alto and soprano saxophonist Guttorm Guttormsen leading a quartet with bassist Iversen again present, but with Rune Klakegg now on piano and Jørgen Næss on drums.

Produced by labels sadly long extinct – respectively MAI (a label strongly political in nature, much involved with anti-EEC matters, and which also recorded the folk-rinsed 1975 Østerdalsmusikk on which Garbarek appears), ZAREPTA, Arctic Records and Octave – these four recordings exemplify the breadth and depth of poetic expression achieved by Norwegian musicians in the 1970s. Together with Karin Krog, Egil Kapstad had been one of the first Norwegian musicians to be invited to play abroad, at the 1964 Antibes Jazz Festival; today, the Bill Evans-inspired pianist may be found playing in female tenorist Bodil Niska's fine quartet, or working with Norwegian poet Jan Erik Vold in a swinging mellow yet often provocative context. Drummer Espen Rud's credentials stretch back to the late 1960s and his work with one of the most innovative groups of that or any other decade: the Svein Finnerud Trio. The 1998 Gemini release Rudlende, where leader Rud is joined by Frode Nymo and Tore Bungorg on saxes, Vigleik Storaaso on piano and Treje Gewelt on bass, supplies rounded and diverse evidence of the compositional maturity of a drummer who has led some of the most interesting groups in recent Norwegian jazz, such as the 1978-83 Krabol.

Featuring pianist Finnerud, bassist Bjørnar andresen (who appeared on Terje Rypdal's debut, eponymous ECM album in 1971) and Rud, the Svein Finnerud Trio began life in 1967; a later, early 1990s version of the trio would feature Svein Christiansen on drums. With its mixture of Paul Bley like pensiveness, Cecil Taylor-ish energy and general cross-rhythmic intensity, this is a group which deserves to be much better known than it is outside Norway. Sadly, leader Finnerud died in June 2000 from a brain tumour. While his death leaves a great gap in Norwegian music, the pianist was able to make two last recordings that are eloquent testimony to the complete integrity of vision that he sustained throughout his life as a working musician.

Following the 1993-94 Travel Pillow session which was issued by Prisma Records of the Henie-Onstad Art Centre, in 1999 bassist Terje Gewelt (ex. Tommy Smith's Forward Motion) produced Sounds and Sights for Finnerud and released it on Resonant Music. Featuring twelve reproductions of Finnerud's accomplished abstract paintings, the record finds Finnerud exploring a spacious and painterly variety of poetically distilled instrumental combinations with Jon Eberson (guitar), Nils Petter Molvær (trumpet), Terje Gewelt (bass) and Svein Christiansen (drums). The same year saw the recording of Egne Hoder (Own Heads), a very different album of expansive high-energy duets and trios with bassist (and long-time friend) Andresen and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love. As I have suggested already, the last is surely one of the most remarkable talents to emerge from Norwegian jazz in recent years: when Pat Metheny concluded one of his sets with Love and bassist Arild Andersen at last year's Molde Festival, he suggested to the audience - with forgivable ignorance of the details of the Norwegian political system – that the drummer should immediately be made "President of Norway!"

One of the busiest musicians in Norway today, Paal Nilssen-Love typifies the focussed literacy that informs the creativity of so many young Norwegian musicians now. His (English) father Terry used to run a jazz club in Stavanger, the west-coast Norwegian oil town: perhaps it was that environment that first stimulated the young drummer to listen as hard as he obviously has done to so many of the greats of drumming history, and still come up with his own conception. You can hear touches of Art Blakey, Philly Joe Jones and Elvin Jones, Sunny Murray and Milford Graves in Love, plus a filtered touch or two of Jon Christensen, the doyen of contemporary Norwegian drummers. However, all this is transformed into something that is Love's own: an intensely focused, dynamically vibrant conception which is as rhythmically forceful as it is poetically wide-ranging, delivered by a pair of some of the most sensitive and well-educated hands you're ever likely to hear play the drums.

A contemporary sample of Love on record might include his recent solo release. Sticks & Stones of SOFA as well as his contribution to parts of Trygve Seim's Different Rivers; his work in the Coltrane-inflected Element and Atomic groups, the South-Africa-meets-Norway SAN quintet and the Don Cherry tribute The Thing which he made a couple of years ago on Crazy Wisdom, with Swedish improvising saxophonist Mats Gustafsson and Norwegian bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, or his work with Bjørnar Andresen and guitarist Jon Eberson on the expansive shape-shifting work Curling Legs trio album Mind the Gap. Place Love next to the very different but equally excellent Norwegian drummer Terje Isungset, whose Taoist-like sensitivity to natural sound, materials and music was profiled last Autumn in issue no 20 of Avant, and you have ample evidence of what a rich seam of creativity it was that Jon Christensen first prised open for further exploration all those years ago.

Most of the Isungset that I've heard, such as his own mythically touched four-part Reise (Journey) with trumpeters Arve Heriksen, Per Jørgensen and Nils Petter Molvær – has been recorded on NOR, the label that saxophonist Karl Seglem started over a decade ago. Although domiciled in Oslo, Seglem – a fine tenor saxophonist, also known to play ram's horns – reveals much feeling in his work for the fjords and the folk-songs, the mountains and the melodies of the West coast of Norway. Records such as Spir (Spire), Rit (Ritual) and Tya have an identity very much their own, integrating eg. the haunting folk song of a singer such as Berit Opheim with the keyboard treatments of Reidar Skår, the Hardanger fiddle of Håkon Høgemo and the sound-texture percussion of Terje Isungset. Like Bendik Hofseth, another excellent contemporary saxophonist, Seglem makes music which is undeniably close in spirit to that of Garbarek. However, just as Hofseth's philosophically inclined and well-delivered vocals on a release like the 1993 Amuse Yourself (including a moving tribute to the spirit of swing in Swing City) are his alone, so do Seglem's various projects establish their own value. In particular, Tya – multi-layered musical narrative concerning growing up on the West coast of Norway, in an area where the sublimity of the presence of water in the landscape has been mediated by the processes of industrial technology –is both a beautiful and challenging record, integrating the ancient and the contemporary, music and poetry to musically rewarding and soulful effect.

"Integrating", "challenging", "rewarding" and "soulful" are probably the four words which I find most appropriate trying to indicate something of the richness of Norwegian music today. Whether it be the contemporary composition profiled on a compilation release like the 1995 Norwegian Contemporary Music, the quietly but powerfully unfolding electro-acoustic soundscapes of Thomas Widerberg's Visual Landscapes, Ketil Bjørnstad's jazz- and rock-inflected settings of the words of Ecvard Much on the Kirkelig Kulturverksted label, or the cavernous, overdriven and unclassifiable sound-eruptions of electric guitarist Tore Elgarøy on the 2001 Rune Grammofon recording The Sound of The Sun, all such Norwegian music is characterised by a highly sophisticated approach to matters of sound-texture and dynamics, and the relation of melody to rhythm. The sort of debates that attended the work of Tveitt and Sæverud now seem simply unnecessary, such is the combination of "Norwegianness" (by which one might today mean, a sensitivity to space and a related capacity for unaffected albeit diversely conceived and telling lyricism) and internationalism in this music. It is as if George Russell's ideas concerning pan-tonality and -rhythm have been absorbed with the morning milk (or evening beer).

The next and last installment will follow next week.
Text: Michael Tucker
Related companies:

Avant Magazine
Related articles:

[Sand]

Sectio


The snowball effect - part 3
29.10.2002
In this last instalment in a series of three, UK-based journalist Michael Tucker presents his Rough guide to (New) Norwegian Music. This excellent article, which was first published in respected Avant Magazine, gives the reader a comprehensive look into four decades of Norwegian jazz and contemporary music.
Norwegian composers and (improvising) instrumentalists have now attained quite extraordinarily levels of technique: one thinks of Edvard Hagerup Bull's or Olav Anton Thommessen's various blends of (Post) modernism and tradition, trumpeter Arve Henriksen's
(post-Jon Hassell) ability to make his trumpet sound – or "breathe" like a Japanese shakuhachi flute, the synthesised sound-rhythms of which keyboardist Bugge Wesseltoft supplied for Jan Garbarek's 1998 Rites album, or Eivind Aarseth's free-ranging yet disciplined textural effects on electric guitar, as profiled on the 1997 Electronique Noir.

However, all such technical expertise would amount to very little were it not set in the service of some sort of musical and/or spiritual vision – which so much of this music seems to be. Like the Norwegian poet Tarjei Vesaas (1897-1970), these musicians seem able "to listen for what one does not understand", as Vesaas put it in his final book The Boat In The Evening.
One might give all sort of reasons for the exploratory richness of such music, ranging from eg. the discovery of vast oil reserves in the early 1960s to the pedagogical brilliance of the jazz music teachers in Oslo and Trondheim (the latter city in particular, has developed a formidable reputation for the stimulating quality of its jazz education at university level). Or one could point to the influence of such long-established festivals as those at Bergen, Molde, Kongsberg and Voss, or the more recent Ultima Contemporary Music Festival in Oslo, and the positive impact of their various yearly commissions and awards on Norwegian musical life. New forces have flowed into the making of Norwegian music, whether from the impact of recent immigration policies or the increasingly assertive tenor of much Sami cultural life, the latter most vividly manifest in the music and songs of some-time Garbarek collaborator, singer Mari Boine. There is also the fact that, just as the legendary Club 7 in Oslo had a great impact on audiences in the 1970s, profiling a wide range of music, so too have recent clubs such as Oslo's Blå (Blue) helped to create the sort of audience where categories may not seem that important any more (although last year's Molde Festival precipitated a newspaper debate about the extent to which Blå-type music, often featuring DJs, could or could not be seen as jazz music).

Mixing genres has been part of Norwegian jazz-inflected music since at least the initial modern era of Garbarek and Rypdal, Andersen and Christensen. Today, a good deal of media attention is focussed on the dance or club-oriented combination of elements which may feature on Bugge Wesseltofts' Jazzland label. Wesseltoft himself is able to combine a contemporary dance-inflected backbeat with some Jarrett-like dynamics, and bring some pleasingly subtle dynamics to his music (the last exemplified by tenor saxophonist – and graphic designer – Håkon Kornstad's guest appearance on one track of Wesseltofts's recent Moving release). Amongst all the media fuss that currently surrounds Wsseltoft, one should not forget how much a blues –based Norwegian musician such as guitarist Knut Reiersrud has long been able to synthesise a wide range of elements in his music, from gospel and blues to Norwegian folk. American jazz and the sort of Eastern scalar elements that contribute so much to the beauty of a track like Fjording, from the early 1990s Kirkelig Kulturverksted release Tramp.

The Grieg-like image of an evening-tinged expanse of mountain lake and reflected clouds that is projected on the cover of the 1990 Jazz På Norsk is still very relevant to the tenor of much Norwegian music today, whether it be the brave beauty of Terje Bjørklund's tonally rooted writing on his Music for Strings album, Ketil Bjørnstad's dream-like settings of the work of Finnish-Swedish poet Edith Södergran on the 1998 Kirkelig Kulturverksted Ett Liv (A Life) album, or the keening intensity of Terje Rypdal's Double Concerto for two electric guitars and symphony orchestra, recorded for ECM in 1998. However, jazz or, more simply, music – in the Norwegian style means many (more) diverse things today.

Music in Norway now embraces the wide-ranging flair and humour of the Brazz Brother as well as the trip-hop grooves and ambient lyricism evident in Nils Petter Molvær's late 1990s Khmer and Solid Ether ECM recordings, the improvisational fluidity and fire of Frode Gjerstad and Petter Wettre, Håkon Kornstad and Frode Nymo (hear the last-named with bassist Steinar Raknes and drummer Håkon Mjåset Johansen on the excellent Urban Connection release from 2001) and British guest Tony Oxley appearing at Blå with guitarist Ivar Grydeland and bassist Tommy Kluften; the reverie-rich lyricism of Garbarek and Rypdal, Arild Andersen and (especially) trumpeter Arve Henriksen – the measured beauty of whose recent Sakuteiki solo release on Rune Grammofon is matched only by his work in the outstanding Food quartet with among others British saxophonist Ian Bellamy and the distilled synthesis of density and translucency in this work with pianist Christian Wallumrød and sound processors Jan Bang and Erik Honorè on the extraordinary Birth Wish; the ongoing excellence of Karin Krog, bitter-sweet, pop-caressed yearnings of singer Silje Nergaard and existentially taut, mythically charged reflections of Sidsel Endresen, the wild abandon of percussionist PaoloVinaccia, bassist Arild Andersen and saxophonist tore Brunborg in collaboration with Sicilian singers on the 1996 live Oslo recording 'Mbara Boom, and the tempered reflections of the saxophonist's earlier suite Tid (Time), which featured Norma Winstone, the African-tinged exuberance of the Coloured Moods band (with one of the many excellent female vocalists in Norway today, Kristin Asbjørnsen, also to be heard on record in the Kvitretten and Krøyt ensembles) and the ascetic intensity of Garbarek's various collaborations with The Hillard Ensemble; the wide-ranging fusion grooves of Terje Gewelt's meeting with Billy Cobham on the 1999 Hide and Seek and the modern-mainstream joys of Kevin Dean's Over at Ola's (with ao. Keyboardist Dag Arnesen, bassist Bjørn Alterhaug and saxophonist Knut Riisnæs, whose brother Odd, incidentally is yet another fine Norwegian saxophonist); the bold mixture of jazz sextet string quartet and voice on Per Husby's philosophically meditative and ecologically sensitive Notes for Nature of 1990 and the world-ranging yet crisply turned and jazz-inflected arrangements of Jon Balke's Magnetic North Ochestra; the driving scratch'n'rap styled fun of today's multi-layered post-modernist Jaga Jazzist band and the more "chops-oriented" genre-mixing sophistication of guitarist Jon Eberson's recent Dreams That Went Astray release on Jazzland (featuring ao. Singer Beate Slettevold Lech, Pål "DJ Strangefruit" Nyhus on vinyl). And that's only the tip of the iceberg… Of all the new labels active in Norway today, Rune Grammofon is perhaps the most provocative, ranging from re-workings of Nordheim to freshly configured improvisation and ambient soundscapes through to sonic rock and a beautiful revisioning of folk material in violinist Nils Økland's Straum of 1999-2000. And like so much Norwegian music today, Rune Grammofon Records (marketed and distributed by EDM) feature graphic design and packaging as thoughtful as it is attractive.

With a population of some four and a half million, over the past decades Norway has managed to produce some of the most exciting genre-crossing music in the world. Once the snowball started in the 1960s by Krog and Garbarek, Rypdal, Andersen and Christensen got rolling, it soon took on the sort of identity that one encounters only in folk tales: big enough to sustain and develop itself, while at the sae time breaking into many, many – widely dispersed yet related – pieces.

Many (including me) would argue that, even though contemporary Norwegian music has not yet produced a performer on the poetic/innovative level of any of the Big Four of Garbarek, Rypdal, Andersen and Christensen, the sheer range of activity evident today suggests there may soon be a third "golden age" of Norwegian jazz, or new music. (The odds on this happening were increased recently when Moldavian pianist Misha Alperin moved to the Oslo area). Will the jazz/new music boom in Norway last? Can a population of only four and a half million support or sustain such levels of creativity for very long? Given the history of the past forty or so years, something tells me that the good people of Norway (or rather, their more than slightly crazy musician) are going to provide some strong and positive responses to all such questions.


Essential Recordings:

Jan Garbarek I Took Up The Runes ECM
Misha Alperin North Story ECM
Arild Andersen Hyperborean ECM
Jon Balke/Magnetic North Further ECM
Biosphere/Deathprod Nordheim Transformed ECM
Mari Boine Gula, Gula Real World
Terje Bjørklund Music For Strings Hemera
Ketil Bjørnstad Water Stories ECM
Kari Bremnes Løsrivelse Kirkelig Kulturverksted
Jon Eberson Dreams That Went Astray Jazzland
Tore Elgarøy The Sound of the Sun Rune Grammofon
Sidsel Endresen Undertow Jazzland
Svein Finnerud Sounds and Sights Resonant Music
Jan Garbarek Group Afric Pepperbird ECM
Arve Henriksen Sakuteiki Rune Grammofon
Terje Isungset Reise NOR
Karin Krog Jubilee. The Best Of Thirty Years Verve
Paal Nilssen-Love Sticks and Stones SOFA
Masqualero Re.Enter ECM
Nils Petter Molvær Khmer ECM
Silje Nergaard At First Light Universal
Nils Økland Straum Rune Grammofon
Arne Nordheim Electric Rune Grammofon
Knut Reiersrud Tramp Kirkelig Kulturverksted
Terje Rypdal Skywards ECM
Harald Sæverud Complete Piano Music vol.2 Victoria
Karl Seglem Rit NOR
Trygve Seim Different Rivers ECM
Geirr Tveitt Suite nr. 1 SIMAX
Bugge Wesseltoft Moving Jazzland
Fartein Valen The Eternal Rune Grammofon
Various (including Egil Kapstad) Jazz På Norsk Gemini
Various The Sweet Sunny North vols. 1 & 2 Shanachie
Various (Janson/Toresen/Anton Thommessen/Hegdal/Hagerup/Bull/Asheim/Wallin)
New Music From Norway Norsk Komponistforening
Various Popofoni Aurora
Various Love Comes Shining Over the Mountain Rune Grammofon
Jan Erik Vold Ingentings Bjelle (Nothing's Bell) PAM
Wallumrød/Henriksen/Bang/Honore Birth Wish BMG Panovision Series
Petter Wettre Trio Meet The Locals Resonant Music
Thomas Widerberg Visual Landscapes TWCD
Food Veggie Rune Grammofon

Many thanks to Tom Bækkerud, Tor Hammerø and Finn J. Kramer-Johansen for their help in the research of this article.
Text: Michael Tucker
Related companies:

Avant Magazine

[Sand]

Some links to young norwegian jazz


What Norwegian jazz mucians look like right now:

[Doc Martin]

Hi Sand,

I am intrigued, apart from Jan Garbarek, I haven’t listened to any Norwegian Jazz. From the Essential Recordings listed below; what 3 or 4 recordings would be a good place to start?


Thanking you in advance,
Doc Martin

[Surfer]

Jan Garbarek I Took Up The Runes ECM
Biosphere/Deathprod Nordheim Transformed ECM

Arve Henriksen Sakuteiki Rune Grammofon
Nils Økland Straum Rune Grammofon
Arne Nordheim Electric Rune Grammofon

Terje Rypdal Skywards ECM

New Music From Norway Norsk Komponistforening
Food Veggie Rune Grammofon

These are some of my most treasured CDs. Particularly the Nils Okland, who also has another CD out on RG, "Bris". I must also add Biosphere's Substrata and Shenzou and Autour de la Lune to this list as well. Deep House or Ambient, but very accomplished sense of dynamics and composition that put it far above other recordings of this type. I have to say Substrata and its flip side Man With A Movie Camera is one of the better Ambient recordings I have ever heard.

And I'm diggin' Gustafsson's The Thing too!

[Surfer]

Originally Posted by Doc Martin

Hi Sand,

I am intrigued, apart from Jan Garbarek, I haven’t listened to any Norwegian Jazz. From the Essential Recordings listed below; what 3 or 4 recordings would be a good place to start?


Thanking you in advance,
Doc Martin

In my opinion as an outsider, Doc, I would say, for jazz, anything by Arve or Food, for more folkish jazz, Nils Okland. For electronica, Biosphere. For modern composition, Arne Nordheim (there is a 5disk box set out of his works).

[gnhrtg]

Well you have asked the right person - when it comes to Norwegian jazz (and related musics) Sand certainly knows his stuff.

Surfer - not that they're the be all end all or anything, but are you familiar with Atomic?

[JaSt]

Sorry, but I have to remind you about three not mentioned but very fine artists:

Vidar Johansen, saxophones
Bjornar Andresen, b
Thomas Stronen, dr

This trio has recorded under the name: "Bayashi" and their music should be checked out.
Bjornar sadly past away some months ago.

[Sand]

Originally Posted by JaSt

Sorry, but I have to remind you about three not mentioned but very fine artists:

Vidar Johansen, saxophones
Bjornar Andresen, b
Thomas Stronen, dr

This trio has recorded under the name: "Bayashi" and their music should be checked out.
Bjornar sadly past away some months ago.

Right now, just this:

Re Bjørnar Andresen.
If possible, why not a re-release of Travel Pillow with the Svein Finnerud Trio?

[Surfer]

Originally Posted by gnhrtg

Well you have asked the right person - when it comes to Norwegian jazz (and related musics) Sand certainly knows his stuff.

Surfer - not that they're the be all end all or anything, but are you familiar with Atomic?

No, should I be? Which album?

I am flat out floored by some of the music coming out of Norway.

[gnhrtg]

Originally Posted by Surfer

No, should I be? Which album?

I am flat out floored by some of the music coming out of Norway.

They play high energy jazz, bordering on free but all based on compositions - they do utilize extended techniques at times but a lot of the solos are explicitly based on harmonies and linear. So if you are interested in that stuff, yes, you certainly should be aware of them.

The band is Havard Wiik on piano, Paal Nilssen-Love on drums, Ingebright Haker Flaten on bass, Fredrik Ljungkvist on reeds, and Magnus Broo on trumpet. Though they are all fine musicians, I'm particularly fond of Paal and Havard.

They have two albums out of Jazzland - Feet Music and Boom Boom and while they both have their highlights, I was lately thinking of compiling the best tracks from each (since they're around the 50 minute range, iirc) to come up with the Atomic album that is really good throughout. Oh and they also have a two-disc set, with School Days (Vandermark on reeds, Kjell Nordeson - also of AALY Trio and a good vibist - on percussion, Bishop on trombone with Paal and Ingebright on drums/bass). The configuration of the double-band changes a number of times throughout the 80-90 minutes of music but come to think of it, this might just be the best representative of their work so far - some great solos by Wiik and Nordeson, on vibes, and explosive drumming by Paal (and even if, as some are, you are put off by Vandermark, he is and plays as only one member of the large-ish ensemble and doesn't get any more writing credits or solo space than the others, or barely so). There is also news of a three disc live set coming up by Atomic.

I've seen the band live, once, in a club in Norway and even though there were some extra-musical concerns that got in the way of my enjoyment of the music Havard and Paal, again, were really impressive throughout.

If, at the end, you'd want to hear Atomic as it is, then I'd recommend going for Feet Music over Boom Boom (our own mke, Mwanji, has a review of the latter someplace, I think, at onefinalnote and there's also a thread here under the reviews section).

[Sand]

Originally Posted by Doc Martin

Hi Sand,

I am intrigued, apart from Jan Garbarek, I haven’t listened to any Norwegian Jazz. From the Essential Recordings listed below; what 3 or 4 recordings would be a good place to start?


Thanking you in advance,
Doc Martin

Listen to the discussion about the people discussing the Norwegian-Swedish-sometimes-American-band-too called Atomic, etc!


Your question is a tough one. I am thinking about it. But I'm busy and I hope that I'm subconciosly thinking about it all the same. Is there a short-cut to Norwegian Jazz?

Though one.

What would we come up with, if we followed the drummers?


Paal Nielsen-Love: The debate has already started...
Thomas Strønen: Already introduced directly and indirectly.
Per Oddvar Johansen: I have a few suggestions
Jarle Vespestad - Sometimes discussed on JC
Audun Kleive - Not to be missed
Terje Isungset - In The Middle of Mist?
Jon Christensen - You know him.

We would miss a couple of CDs I would like to include:
Wibutee - Playtime
Radka Toneff - Steve Dobrogosz - Fairytales
Elin Rosseland/Christian Wallumrød/Johannes Eick: Fra himmelen
and, etc, and

[picsou]

Just waking up from the longest ever hibernation.
Thanks to Sand for reproducing Avant's article here. I will read it, before voicing my comments. Just a quick point for now, I am surprised by the Jan Garbarek's selection: I Took Up the Runes would not appear on my Best Of for Jan.

[Sand]

Fairytales aproaching 90000 copies..

(20-12-2006)

Radka Toneff/Steve Dobrogosz´ legendary album, Fairytales has sold 89722 copies since it´s relase in 1982. (as of 30.11.2006.) Sales include both LP and cd´s.

[JaSt]

Anyone heard about Rune Larsen from Tromsö?

[Sand]

No, I have no idea who that might be. I may look it up of course, but have not done so. My guess is that he is a musician. Clever, right? And he has done a recording for your label? Now I'll check.