In 2016, the Norwegian pianist and composer Espen Berg was commissioned to write for the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra. With the opportunity to hand-pick a line-up consisting of 14 of Scandinavia’s most creative and prolific jazz artists, Espen grasped this opportunity with both hands and a mind bursting with ideas. MAETRIX premiered at Molde Int’l Jazz Festival in 2017 to a standing ovation, making the audience shake their head in awe. However, MAETRIX isn’t just an impressive feat, it’s also incredibly beautiful music.
14
Sep
[ September 22nd, 2023 release on Jazzland Recordings: Frode Haltli – Avant Folk Triptyk ]
release date: 22 September 2023 on Jazzland Recordings
«Ritualised choral chants and skronky electric guitar add textures and lustre, subverting possible expectations of an album whose principal instrument is the humble accordion. It may be called Avant Folk but it’s so much more than that.» – Sid Smith, Prog Magazine
21
Aug
[ August the 26th, 2022 release on Norsk Jazzforum: This Is Our Music – Jazz Out Of Norway vol.10 ]
The Norwegian jazz scene has it all: cutting edge-contemporary, orchestral and vocal jazz, jazz rock…and a growing audience, jostling and responding to the music while getting younger and younger. It has a background in folk music, with original instruments and sounds, traditions carried forward and transformed by the people of today. It has a classical music heritage with prominent composers who have left a deep mark. All of this has pushed the nation’s music… ANNE YVEN
01
Apr
[ April the 2nd release from ODIN: Gard Nilssen’s Supersonic Orchestra – If You Listen Carefully The Music Is Yours ]
release date: April 2, 2020 via ODIN
Fasten your seat belt, please. Get ready for the full tilt, barely tamed, beautiful monster that is Gard Nilssen’s sixteen-piece Supersonic Orchestra. Audacious and experimental, like everything the Norwegian drummer and composer touches, Supersonic flouts convention and, in particular, realigns the longstanding relationship between pre-composition and improvisation in orchestral jazz. If You Listen Carefully The Music Is Yours, its debut, was recorded live at the adventurous Molde International Jazz Festival in 2019, where Nilssen was Artist in Residence. The band’s uniquely configured, all-star lineup features three drummers, three double bassists and ten horn players, most of them saxophonists.
04
Jan
[ January the 24th release from Hubro – Stein Urheim – Downhill Uplift ]
Release: 24.01.2020
For his sixth Hubro album, the Norwegian composer, bandleader and virtuoso guitarist Stein Urheim presents a new set of compositions for a specially formed group featuring three of his favourite musicians: bassist Ole Morten Vagan and percussionists/multi-instrumentalists Hans Hulbækmo and Kåre Opheim. Characterised by a relaxed, loose-limbed pulse rippling with cross-rhythms, and an epic, widescreen feel that can suggest the open vistas of the American west, the seven tracks function together as a kind of informal suite. Their strongly defined melodies and carefully layered textures evoke a luminously-coloured acoustic world where bucolic, country-rock tinged soundscapes meet world-jazz improvisations and a little of what might be termed pop-Americana.
22
Oct
[ October 2018 release from ODIN – Trondheim Jazz Orchestra + Ole Morten Vagan – Happy Endlings, 26th October 2018 ]
The 20th album, and just before the 20th anniversary! The legendary wonder orchestra, dining out of a seemingly inexhaustible pool of madly talented academic musicians under the direction of the renowned Norwegian bassist OLE MORTEN VÅGAN (MOTIF).