Erlend Apneseth trio: Lysne – video

administrator — Wed, 30 May 2018 09:55:01 +0000

The VJ duo Klara Sofie Ludvigsen and Fredrik Rysjedal has made a poetic video for the track “Lysne” from Erlend Apnseth Trio´s critically acclaimed second album “Åra”, that was released last year. Worth mentioning is that the poet Erlend O. Nødvedt delivers a powerfull performance on this specific track that reportedly has made a huge impact even on listeners who can´t understand Norwegian. Erlend Apneseth trio recently did their first concert in a few months at Nattjazz in Bergen and their next concert is due on July 5th at the Kongsberg Jazzfestival. On September 14th a new project with Frode Haltli will be premiered at the Ultima Festival in Oslo. More dates coming up…

Hilde Marie Holsen: Lazuli

administrator — Fri, 18 May 2018 12:18:35 +0000

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Acclaimed trumpeter/soundscaper Hilde Marie Holsen follows up her critical hit mini-album debut, ‘Ask’, with the dark and mysterious ‘Lazuli’, a suite of four compositions inspired by visual art and named after minerals used to colour paint.

Hilde Marie Holsen’s ‘Lazuli’ is an almost shockingly complete musical statement. It’s as if an intense dialogue between the processes of composition and improvisation, and the interplay of sound and music, has led to the creation of experimental and often challenging work that nevertheless comes across as absolutely fully-formed; as inevitable, even. The result is a kind of monumentality, where to change just one element of the final text becomes impossible to contemplate, despite the whole thing remaining, at another level, entirely provisional and contingent, as immaterial as air itself, and perhaps closer to the idea of a sonic atmosphere than to most definitions of what constitutes music. ‘Element’ is significant, too, for Hilde Marie Holsen’s implicit thematic touchstones for ‘Lazuli’ – the chemical minerals used to create pigment in paint, and the idea of painting with sound, together with her own intuitive methods of production, continually working and re-working her material until the art reveals itself – relate in some way to the notion of alchemy. If not quite turning base matter into gold, Holsen is taking the sounds made by her trumpet and refashioning them through a combination of breath and electronic processing, into vivid new life.

“All the electronic sounds on the album are still live and processed trumpet, as they were on ‘Ask’” says Holsen. “Since ‘Ask’, I’ve been exploring, among other things, different ways to play the acoustic trumpet, both conventional and unconventional, trying to find different timbres that can also give a larger register of processed sound in the electronic soundscape. The music on ‘Lazuli’ began as improvisation, and then later on I’ve had the chance to do minor adjustments and edits on the tracks. ‘Lazuli’ came about through a collaboration with the artist and painter Tyra Fure Brandsæter. We’ve spent some time practising our art together, using each other’s expression as an inspiration for our own performance and artistic production. The titles on the album are an homage to this collaboration: they are all different types of minerals that have been used as colour pigment in painting.”

The parallels with visual art are also evident in the way Hilde Marie Holsen has worked to develop each of the four pieces that make up ‘Lazuli’ (whose epic title track forms the concluding part of the quartet, at sixteen minutes the longest by some distance; the other titles are, in order, ‘Orpiment’, ‘Eskolaite’, and ‘Lapis’). It’s as if the background of silence or gentle electronic flutter against which she begins, corresponds to a painter’s preparatory white ground, which is then overlaid, sound upon sound, to create a thick impasto of textural detail heavy with potential meaning. In the palimpsest of the finished track, the clarity and immediacy of the recorded sound becomes almost three-dimensional, so real you feel you could reach out and touch it.

‘Lazuli’s’ combination of beautifully pure-toned, almost classical-sounding acoustic trumpet with an often dark and dense forest of electronically manipulated noise, is devastatingly effective. We seem to hear what might be snuffling animals or squelching sci-fi film FX alongside random clicks and glitches or rumbling, ominous, industrial machine-hum, together with gentler sounds from a more lyrical or pastoral realm: snatches of sleigh or shepherd bells, perhaps the mystical half-echo of a tamboura drone. As the ambient sounds have themselves been triggered by the trumpet through various electronic plug-ins, or captured by re-processing the instrument’s total sound-making potential, from blowing to sucking to playing as percussion, there is no real gap between one and the other, reinforcing the organic nature of the the entire artistic process, from first puff to final parp.

Of course, there are numerous exemplars of an instrument-plus-electronics approach in improvised and experimental music, even those combining trumpet and electronics. We could consider Terry Riley’s tape-manipulations of Chet Baker in ‘Music For The Gift’ in Paris in 1963, the experiments of Jon Hassell, Mark Isham and Graham Haynes, as well as a very strong Norwegian tradition including Nils Petter Molvaer and Ave Henriksen. But no-one, perhaps, has gone as far as Hilde Marie Holsen in making the sound – the noise, even – such an equal partner to the music, and in creating such a seamless end-result to such a pleasingly natural-seeming process, where one musical instrument is used to provide both the form and the content, the figure and the ground. Listen, especially, to the final, title-track, of ‘Lazuli’ and you’ll see how far Hilde Marie Holsen can go.

Skadedyr: Musikk!

administrator — Mon, 16 Apr 2018 11:30:57 +0000

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Norwegian release: 27.04.2018
- LP available May 11
International release: July 2018

It’s a tough task going for transcendence straight from the off, but that is what Skadedyr’s new album does, almost immediately summoning up a mood of ecstatic abandon whose wailing guitar and keyboard drones, ululating voice and rattling percussion, bring to mind the cosmic spirit of Alice Coltrane and Carlos Santana, or the deep spiritual jazz of Pharoah Sanders at its most cathartic. That the opening (whose governing mood is to be picked up again in a later sequence) is then followed by a weird deconstructed interlude of percussion, parping tuba, free-improv glissandi, oompah-band musical jokes and ’noise’ might appear frustrating, but this is to penetrate to the heart of what Skadedyr are about. While their eclectic pick and mix of musical styles from the past, present and future might suggest all sorts of parallels and comparisons – let’s try parody versions of Sun Ra, Art Ensemble of Chicago, ICP Orchestra, Willem Breuker Kollektief, John Zorn and Jaga Jazzist (whose Andreas Mjøs produced the band’s debut, ‘Kongekrabbe’), just for a start – they remain unregenerately themselves, and all too happy to demolish anyone’s restrictive idea of what their musical identity should strive to become.

Perhaps less ‘free’ than bloody-minded (if, of course, it can fly by the jazz tag at all), this is music that insists on its right to be whatever it chooses; to follow its own rules, or even to refuse to believe that rules exist. The sounds that result can, therefore, test a listener’s powers of endurance to the max, but the balancing pay-off comes in the extreme pleasure and surprise one can experience when all the loose particles of sound – Skadedyr’s free radicals – suddenly cohere into a satisfying whole and strike a note of beauty, however discordant, before dissolving once again into the ether. And the more you listen, the more the apparent lack of structure seems to function perfectly well, the music expanding and contracting biomorphically, like an organism that lives and breathes, creating its own internal rhythm and sense of space and time. The blend of ancient and modern, order and chaos, the raw and the cooked, is reflective of life itself.

It’s perhaps incumbent – inevitable, even – to at this stage mention ‘Norwegian-ness’. Although Skadedyr clearly exist in an internationalist framework of music and the arts generally, and there is nothing self-consciously ‘Nordic’ or folkloric about ‘Musikk!’, nor its two predecessors, ‘Kongekrabbe’ and ‘Culturen’, you have to wonder where else other than Oslo Skadedyr could have originated from. A twelve-piece mini-orchestra whose members are also involved with a myriad of other bands and projects, the collective ethos and rough-hewn, winging it style of improvisation speak of enormous reserves of confidence and a healthy disregard for convention. This makes Skadedyr somehow emblematic of a scene where different musical cantons – experimental rock, jazz, electronica, out-there weirdness – can coalesce together quite happily without the essential presence of one single author-as-god figure whipping everyone else into shape, and enforcing dominance through submission.

In Skadedyr, there really are too many cooks, although founder-members Anja Lauvdal, Heida Mobeck, Hans Hulbekmo and Lars Ove Fossheim, take a leading role in determing the initial shape of group compositions. There also has to be at least something of Norway in the prevalence of brass band instruments, or the flippant mix and match between different musical registers, accordion and slide guitar, and clash of high and low cultures. But if we do regard Skadedyr as Norwegian, this is in any case less to do with consigning something so new and so excitingly boundary-breaking to an ancient regime of outmoded nation-state cliches about how we categorize art, and more about identifying the music’s positive virtues with its essential terroir. Wherever ‘Musikk!’ comes from, it’s an interesting place.

Frode Haltli: Avant Folk CD/LP

administrator — Thu, 15 Mar 2018 13:41:48 +0000

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The opening track of ‘Avant Folk’ is like a dream of what contemporary experimental folk-meets-jazz-meets-chamber-music might be. Composed by Frode Haltli, ‘Hug’ begins with a galumphing off-centre rhythm that could be an accompaniment to elephants waltzing before the wheezing bellows-breath of Haltli’s accordion creates delightfully airy whispers of noise that drift across the other instruments like wisps of cloud across the sky.

Then we get the entry of the theme, a compulsive Nordic ear-worm folk melody led by Hardanger fiddle and violin that’s half woozy sea-shanty and half universal pan-African groove, backed up by shuffle-beat drumming like Ed Blackwell with Ornette Coleman. As if that wasn’t enough for one tune already, the music continues to evolve, with a beautifully poised improvised solo on trumpet by Hildegunn Øiseth that sounds so perfect it should really win some kind of award on its own. The groove slows down, the elephant waltz returns to form a satisfyingly symmetrical conclusion and the music gradually resolves into silence, bringing to an end what has been seven and a half minutes of continuous invention. It’s quite a performance, and quite a band, the dectet of expert players covering enough instruments between them to simulate the tonal breadth of a full orchestra while retaining the humble, home-made aesthetic of a traditional folk ensemble, matching compositional sophistication and individual virtuosity with collective empathy and hard-won grace.

Elsewhere, as the album develops, the folk references expand to include echoes of west African desert blues, east European gypsy swing, Armenian double-reed laments and lugubrious Nordic village knees-ups on a range of material partly adapted from traditional hymn-tunes and songs from Norway and the Faroe islands to form a kind of north Atlantic gumbo. But ‘Avant Folk’ never feels like a slapdash fusion of different elements mashed together without regard for the integrity of the whole. Importantly, the band always sounds like a proper band, as fleet-footed as any improvisational jazz ensemble, and able to hurdle with ease the normal generic divides separating one type of music from another. By the time the listener reaches the end of the album’s final track, ’Neid’ – another Frode Haltli composition, like the opening ‘Hug’ – ‘Avant Folk’ has effectively created its own genre, a pleasingly congruent collection of stylistic traits that sounds like nothing so much as itself. All the music, whether composed by Frode Haltli or adapted from antique sources, is arranged jointly by Haltli and the band members.

So where did ‘Avant Folk’ come from and why does it sound so good? For a start, Frode Haltli (born 1975, Norway) is, like many of the ensemble’s star players, a classically-trained virtuoso who from an early age (he began the accordion at seven) has been well used to working between different forms of music, from traditional folk to the avant-garde, and to collaborating with players from all sorts of backgrounds. Haltli also composes, both on his own and with Maja S.K.Ratkje (his co-producer on ‘Avant Folk’, who is responsible for the album’s editing and mixing), and has developed very strong links with fellow musicians and composers both within Norway and internationally, once again working across the normal boundaries demarcating one musical form from another, recording the complete accordion works of Arne Nordheim, for example, but also appearing with the various groups of jazz saxophonist Trygve Seim. His debut recording for ECM, ‘Looking On Darkness’ was released in 2002, followed by ‘Passing Images’ from 2007, (with trumpeter Arve Henriksen, violist Garth Knox and Maja S.K. Ratkje on vocals), and ‘Air’ (2016), a recording of music for accordion and strings by Hans Abrahamsen and Bent Sorensen with the Arditti Quartet and the Trondheim Soloists. His debut release for Hubro, ‘Vagabonde Blu’ (2014), is a live solo recording featuring works by Salvatore Sciarrino, Aldo Clementi and Arne Nordheim. As if any further exemplars of Frode Haltli’s customary melding of the classical repertoire with folk, jazz and beyond were needed, we can also note his current duo with the Norwegian violinist Gjermund Larsen; The Snowflake Trio (with Irish flautist Nulala Kennedy and Norwegian fiddler Vegar Vardal); and a trio with another fiddler, Ragnhild Furebotten, and the Swedish nyckelharpist Emilia Amper.

The breadth of Frode Haltli’s interests is not unusual in Norwegian music and this is paralleled by a number of his collaborators on ‘Avant Folk’, many of whom – like the inspirational fiddler Erlend Apneseth (a regular Hubro artist in a number of settings) or the keyboardist Stale Storlokken (of Supersilent and Motorpsycho, among others) enjoy similarly wide-ranging careers that weave in and out of numerous musical styles and settings. But the last word on ‘Avant Folk’ has to be the music. The album ends on the suitably epic note of Haltli’s ‘Neid’, an original composition that sounds absolutely timeless, matching a maelstrom of squeaky-gate post-serialist glissandi with an ancient-sounding dirge-like refrain. Haltli’s own stunningly adept accordion solo, its intensely emotional voicings heard against a splashy biscuit tin-lid style percussive backdrop, then gives way to the stately pairing of gently-stepping double-bass and country-roots electric guitar that in turn heads eastwards towards the Balkans before ending up back home in the northlands again, the thirteen minute performance superbly resolving itself in a final sequence of transcendent hymn-like solemnity. Wow.

Frode Haltli – accordion
Erlend Apneseth – Hardanger fiddles
Hans P. Kjorstad – violin
Rolf-Erik Nystrøm – saxophones
Hildegunn Øiseth – trumpet, goat horn and vocals
Ståle Storløkken – harmonium and synthesizers
Juhani Silvola – guitars and electronics
Oddrun Lilja Jonsdottir – guitar and vocals
Fredrik Luhr Dietrichson – double bass
Siv Øyunn Kjenstad – drums and vocals

Splashgirl: Sixth Sense CD/LP

administrator — Thu, 15 Mar 2018 12:29:49 +0000

Norwegian release 16.04.2018

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Immersive electro-acoustic trio Splashgirl (Andreas Stensland Lowe, keyboards; Jo Berger Myhre, bass/guitar/electronics; Andreas Lonmo Knudsrod, drums/percussion) was the first act to sign to the Hubro label, with the group’s second album as a unit, ‘Arbor’, marking the label’s debut in 2009. Since then, each subsequent release has deepened and strengthened the developing Splashgirl sound, from ‘Pressure’ (2011) and ‘’Field Day Rituals’ (2013) to ‘Hibernation’ (2015).

With the arrival of a sixth album, which continues the band’s relationship with the inspirational Seattle-based engineer/musician Randall Dunn, famed for his work with Earth and Sunn O))), it’s evident that Splashgirl has reached the end of one span of creativity and begun to enter another, ascending to a whole new level. For ’Sixth Sense’ is a breakthrough project characterised by a radical freedom of approach to composition and performance. At times, the results can seem closer to the sculptural manipulation of pure sound than to the workaday norms of more conventional music-making. The wonderfully immanent, in-your-face sonic density of the album’s mile-wide dynamic range also represents a remarkably successful attempt to capture the extremes of the audio spectrum. In short, ‘Sixth Sense’ sounds immense.

But if Splashgirl’s journey from piano, bass and drums post-jazz trio to out-there experimentalists might seem all but complete, the delicate interplay of acoustic instruments continues to perform a vital role. It’s an interplay that opens and closes ’Sixth Sense’, whose circular structure departs from, and returns to, a predominantly acoustic sound-world. Minimalistic plinky-plonk piano, thrumming double bass and splashy drums and cymbals become the jumping-off points for further sonic adventures to be explored through both live improvisation and post-production treatments, with any musical statement remaining essentially provisional until finally fixed – caught in the net – by the editing process. These signature sounds and their electronic manipulations are also to be heard alongside a myriad of musical influences, from musique concrete and leftfield post-rock to cinematic echoes of all sorts of things: ‘Blade Runner’-like retro-futurism, say; the pre-digital electric-fusion of ‘Black Market’-era Weather Report; synth-driven Tangerine Dream-style Krautrock. The result is a thrilling suite of seven separate pieces that can be listened to either incrementally or as one long-form work where the sheer density of sound and gradual accretion of meaning seems to deepen the longer it goes on, achieving by the end a kind of hard-won epic grandeur that is very impressive, moving even. The range of Splashgirl’s influences and reference points, and the tastefulness with which they have been chosen and employed, also serve to reinforce the sense that there’s a real creative intelligence at work here, and that the listener can relax with confidence into whatever new journey they are being taken on. There might be no clear destination in view. But it will definitely be interesting.

‘Sixth Sense’ was partly recorded in Iceland by Randall Dunn, at the same 2015 sessions that produced ‘Hibernation’, and partly by Splashgirl at the trio’s self-built studio in Oslo, in March, 2017. The album was mixed by Johnny Skalleberg at Amper Tone, Oslo, and mastered by Espen Høydalsvik at Tinnitus Mastering, Oslo.

21 March: Centrala, Birmingham, UK
22 March: Milton Keynes Gallery, Milton Keynes, UK
23 March: The Hive, Shrewsbury, UK

Slagr: Dirr

administrator — Wed, 07 Feb 2018 16:13:15 +0000

Norwegian release 16.02.2018

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The meditative music of Slagr – whose latest album, ‘DIRR’, was recorded and mixed by Andreas Mjøs of Jaga Jazzist, the producer of two previous Slagr albums – provides a portal for the imagination to roam free: a magical sound-world whose simple melodies and drones combine with an audio-palette of austere yet beautiful instrumental textures to provoke an infinite sense of openness capable of conveying a myriad of meanings.

The instruments themselves – Hardanger fiddle, cello, vibraphone and glass harmonica – imply a measure of the music’s reach, from the folk tradition to renaissance polyphony to the contemporary avant-garde. It’s an aesthetic where the humble, home-spun legacy of Nordic fiddle tunes and church music meets the reticent yet sensuous minimalism of Morton Feldman amid a mysterious liminal soundscape where what is heard sometimes seems like it’s on the very edge of consciousness, as if one is half awake and half in dreams, the music half there and half not.

While it may be reductive to see Slagr’s music as quintessentially northern or Nordic, it does fit the Danish artist Asger Jorn’s conception of the north as “the dream centre of Europe”. This is music that drifts along like clouds, changing shape almost imperceptively as it goes. It also requires very careful attention from the listener, as one adapts one’s ears to a microscopic rate of change where the slow drag of a horsehair bow across bare strings can suggest the harmonic flutter of a Mongolian throat singer’s music of the spheres, and where the disturbance of air around the lip of a glass half-filled with water creates a spectral hum that seems to become part of the very atmosphere, like sonic weather.

But while the music of this very environmentally-aware trio (who in 2016 contributed to ‘Melting’, Amund Sjølie Sveen’s theatrical performance piece on the theme of global warming), inevitably carries strong associations of the natural world – one thinks, say, of a vast forest or tundra landscape whose open spaces represent a logical imaginative response to the wide open spaces of the music itself – there are important cultural associations too, not least with cinema and the filmic.

On the present album’s wonderfully pliant opening track, aur, Amund Sjølie Sveen’s glass harmonica drones can suggest the distressed piano-shimmers of Roy Budd’s introductory theme to the cult thriller ‘Get Carter’, or John Barry’s iconic cimbalon-strings on ‘The Ipcress File’, together with their well-attested mutual influence on the creepy Theremin opening to Portishead’s ‘Glory Box’. Indeed, one of the great attractions of Slagr’s imaginative open-ness is the potential it holds for hearing allusive echoes of all sorts of things, from sleigh bells to seances. And the idea of a seance – the conjuring up of a particular spirit or atmosphere – might be a relevant reference point. There is an inescapable sense of the uncanny here, a Gothic evocation of rituals in the dark that is very effective whether the music is listened to attentively or used as a kind of subtle ambient ectoplasm floating in the background.

‘DIRR’, while maintaining a satisfying aesthetic unity that allows the album to be perceived as a thematic whole, like a suite or a cycle of related pieces, is also remarkably various. The interweaving of the respective instruments’ at times strikingly similar-sounding timbres, the wide range of noises each instrument makes, and the constant alteration or exchange between the ‘lead’ voice or voices from track to track creates a continual sense of adventure and surprise that is very appealing. We may not know what the music of Slagr is about – if music can be said to be ‘about’ anything – but it conveys a powerful atmospheric presence, a sort of aural spirit-photograph or record of the spaces – both internal and external – the music seems to move you through as it plays.

Tour:
08. February – Vreng, Bergen – Ny musikk
15. February – Oslo Riksscenen
07. March – Oslo, Nynorskens hus
08. March – Notodden
14. March – Trondheim

New signing: Slagr

administrator — Wed, 07 Feb 2018 16:06:21 +0000

We´re proud to welcome a new signing to the Hubro roster: SLAGR. Their new album “Dirr” is due for release in Norway in February and abroad in March/April. The trio was founded in 2003, and consists of Anne Hytta on hardanger fiddle, Amund Sjølie Sveen on vibraphone and cellist Katrine Schiøtt. In the music of Slagr, pieces evolve slowly and almost imperceptibly, as percussionist Amund Sjølie Sveen places sustained Vibraphone-droplets and glassy harmonics on top of the closely intertwined melodic motives and austere chord progressions of Anne Hytta’s hardanger fiddle and Katrine Schiøtt’s cello. As part of a deep and trance-like process, the band carefully and slowly arrive at a resonant, sonorous continuum of sounds that is as concise as it is poetic.

Slagr has released solaris (2007), straum, stille (2011) and Songs by Geirr Tveitt with singer Camilla Granlien (2013). They also play on jazz pianist Andreas Ulvo’s album Softspeaker (2012). Their latest album short stories was released April 2015, and was awarded Spellemannprisen (the Norwegian Grammy) for best album in the open category.

SkyDive Trio announce new album and tour

administrator — Wed, 31 Jan 2018 09:27:41 +0000

Finally SkyDive returns with a brilliant new album set for release in Norway on February 2nd: Sun Sparkle. The magnificent trio also has some live dates in Norway and The Netherlands the upcoming week!

Tour:
31.Jan @JazzSceneOslo (N)
2.Feb @Paradox_Tilburg (NL)
7.Feb @ TromsøJazzklubb (N)
8.Feb @ HamarJazzKlubb (N)
9.Feb @AdLibJazzklubb, Bodø (N)

SkyDive Trio: Sun Sparkle

administrator — Wed, 31 Jan 2018 09:18:23 +0000

Norwegian release 02.02.2018
International release TBA

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SkyDive Trio’s second album ‘Sun Sparkle’ – which arrives three years after its acclaimed predecessor, ‘Sun Moee’ – presents the listener with an intriguing set of paradoxes. A power trio who use full throttle only very sparingly, the band can appear to play loud music quietly, and quiet music, loud, countering jazz subtlety with rock attack. They also partner the relatively clean and melodic sound of Thomas T. Dahl’s guitar with the mountainous riffs and deep, seismic explosions of Mats Eilertsen’s bass, rather as if Pat Metheny was being accompanied by Peter Hook, of Joy Division and New Order. The great Finnish drummer Olavi Louhivuori somehow bridges the aesthetic gap, alternating crunching four-square rhythms with delicately shimmering percussive strokes.

There is no single SkyDive Trio style or sound and each of the ten, very varied original songs contains a very specific musical address to the listener, while their marked contrasts in tempo, mood and texture can also prove deceptive, with even the sun-dappled highlights of a sensitive lyrical ballad holding the odd dark shadow. As with all the best music, the devil is in the detail, and there’s an often cinematic, widescreen quality to the production, with barely-heard, almost subliminal traces of overdubbed guitar or percussion sometimes hiding at the edges of the sound, as if to tease us. The paradoxes of ‘Sun Sparkle’ are perhaps most evident in the twin poles of the album’s contents, with the opening ‘Launch’ – what at first appears to be a gritty post-rock slab of busily repetitive patterning – answered by the closing ‘Wish I Was Who? (Camera Off)’, a beautiful minimalist ballad whose Bill Frisell-ish country twang dances to the kind of stately pulse we might expect to hear in a Bach partita. These extremes are revisited in the second half of the album, when the wonderfully light and airy ‘Spruce’, with Mats Eliertsen’s bowed double bass taking the melody line against Dahl’s simple chordal refrain, followed by the heavy electric bass and distorted guitar of ‘Ascending’, before they reach a transfiguring synthesis in the deeply satisfying title track, ‘Sun Sparkle’, where Dahl’s playing approaches a peak of restrained yet sharply intense lyricism that can recall the mastery of Jimi Hendrix or Carlos Santana at their most transcendent.

SkyDive Trio is also a kind of modest supergroup whose three members have had distinguished careers in a variety of ensembles, as both leaders, co-leaders and sidemen. Mats Eilertsen, who plays electric and acoustic basses on the album, and who composed four of the ten songs, including the opening and closing tracks, is an iconic player within the Norwegian and European scenes, having played in the first version of the hugely influential group Food with Iain Ballamy, Arve Henriksen and Thomas Stronen, as well as with Tord Gustavsen, Jacob Young, the Hakon Kornstad Trio and Solveig Slettahjell’s Slow Motion Orchestra, among many others. In addition, he has appeared as a bassist with international stars such as Joshua Redman, Pat Metheny and Kenny Wheeler. Eilertsen has released four albums as a leader on Hubro, including ‘Radio Yonder’ (2009) and ‘SkyDive’ (2011), both of which feature Thomas T. Dahl and Olavi Louhivuori. All three played in the ensemble for Eilertsen’s suite of compositions, Rubicon, commissioned for Vossa Jazz in 2014 and released as an album for ECM in 2016, as well as with its antecedent as the SkyDive Quintet with saxophonist Tore Brunborg and pianist Alexi Tuomarila. Eilertsen also appears with Nils Økland’s band from the recent Hubro album ‘Lysning.

Guitarist and composer Thomas T. Dahl, the principal soloist with SkyDive Trio and the composer of the album’s ’Surface Stride’, was a student at Trondheim Musikkonservatorium, and he continues to work in education, presently as Associate Professor at Greig Academy in Bergen. He played with the band Kroyt with vocalist Kristin Asbjornsen from 1993-2005, receiving the accolade of a Spellemannprisen, the Norwegian ‘Grammy’, in 1999. His other bands include Dingobats, and BMX with Per Jorgensen, Oywind Skarbo and Njal Olnes. He has also produced for HighasaKites, the Eivind Austad Trio, and Knut Kristiansen & Bergen Big Band.

Percussionist Olavi Louhivuori, who composed five of ’Sun Sparkle’s’ songs, studied drums and composition at the Sibelius Academy. He made his reputation with three influential bands: the Joona Toivanen Trio, the Ilmiliekki Quartet and the Sun Trio, before touring and recording with the great Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko. Olavi has has also played with Anthony Braxton, Marilyn Crispell, Susanne Abbuehl and Kenny Wheeler. He has released several albums with his own band and as a solo artist, and was awarded an Emma Prize (Finnish Grammy) with the band Oddarrang in 2007.

Tour:
31.Jan @JazzSceneOslo (N)
2.Feb @Paradox_Tilburg (NL)
7.Feb @ TromsøJazzklubb (N)
8.Feb @ HamarJazzKlubb (N)
9.Feb @AdLibJazzklubb, Bodø (N)

Stein Urheim takes his Cosmolodic Orchestra on tour

administrator — Mon, 29 Jan 2018 11:16:35 +0000

Stein Urheim´s recent album “Utopian Tales” has recieved glowing reviews. Now he will bring the all-star band from the album, The Cosmolodic Orchestra, on the road in Norway for a tour.

Per Jørgensen: trumpet, vocals
Kjetil Møster: saxophones, bass clarinet, electronics
Ole Morten Vågan: double bass
Kåre Opheim: drums & percussion
Mari Kvien Brunvoll: vocals, samples and electronics
Stein Urheim: guitars, vocals, tamboura, Turkish tanbur,
bass, samples, collages and electronic

January 26 Vaksdal Musikklubb, Vaksdal
January 27 Dokkhuset, Trondheim
January 29 Lyd – Haugesund Billedgalleri
February 02 Nasjonal Jazzscene – Oslo
February 03 Bergen Kjøtt, Bergen
February 04 Kabuso, Øystese