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Punkt (Day 3) at London Jazz Festival
"Is it the improvisation that makes it jazz?," asks one woman, apparently genuinely uncertain.
Sidsel Endresen
vocals
At one point she plays thumb piano, at another she sings over a simple chord sequence pre-recorded on a dictaphone. But for the most part, Endresen flits from what sounds like Elvish to a child's impression of a passing car, then on to the sort of rhythmic half-chokes more usually issued by South Africa's 
Miriam Makeba
vocals1932 - 2008
What follows, however, is very electronic indeed. For the show is part of Punkt, the innovative Norwegian festival that is making a temporary home in the UK for the culmination of the London Jazz Festival. And the central conceit of that festival is that every performance is immediately followed, in an adjacent room, by a so-called live remix.
To some, the dreaded R word simply implies the less than delicate addition of a pounding beat. Yet when the audience decamps to the room next door, we find Punkt co-founders Erik Honore and Jan Bang re- working elements of Endresen's vocal with the utmost restraint. Much is abstract, frankly impossible to identify from the show we've just witnessed, although recognizable words surface now and again: "upstairs... lie down... easy, lazy." Meanwhile, playing live over the top, are bassist Peter Freemanand 
Jon Hassell
trumpet
b.1937
It is intended as no disrespect to Hassell to say that as much as his own canon, at least the side where the rhythm section is less explicitly influenced by world music, the remix calls to mind 
Miles Davis
trumpet
1926 - 1991
The second half of tonight's program kicks off, back in the main concert hall, with 
Nils Petter Molvaer
trumpet
b.1960
That said, he's still a highly subtle player when he wants to be: the first four or so minutes of his set consist solely of blowing through his trumpet so softly that the instrument emits only a ghostly, non-pitched sound. In fact, Molvaer himself remains almost as mellow for much of the show; if his set feels more upbeat than that of many of his contemporaries, it is less the result of his own playing than of the bed beneath him.
Eivind Aarset
guitar
The focal point, however, remains Molvaer himself, undoubtedly owing a debt to both Hassell and Davis but one of the few contemporary trumpeters who can be mentioned in the same breath in his own right.
It's only a shame that his stellar performance is let down by the weakest remix I've seen at Punkt, whether by his UK manifestation or in its native Norway. Regular faces DJ Strangefruit and Jan Bang are fine, but the female vocal—something along the lines of "flying high with you is just a fantasy"—sounds like a refrain from an uplifting house track, long forgotten and best left that way.
Though an anti-climax, it can't, however, significantly blight the closing night of what has been a superb run of gigs: both the three days of Punkt and ten days of the wider Scene Norway. It's testament once again to the sheer volume of musical talent in Norway, a country with a total population of less than five million, and to the curator, BBC Radio 3's Fiona Talkington. Here's hoping next year's LJF offers something half as exciting.
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