Hans Hulb?kmo

Trondheim Jazz Orchestra & Espen Berg: Maetrix

by Chris May
August 17, 2024

Lana and Lilly Wachowski's The Matrix (1999)--an inspiration for Norwegian pianist and composer Espen Berg's Maetrix--divides opinion. The movie is regarded by some, including one assumes Berg, as a prescient masterpiece addressing the existential threat posed to humanity by digital technology. Others say it is pretentious twaddle. No worries. Discord is unlikely to ...

Flukten: Flukten

by Chris May
May 17, 2024

A supergroup of the best sort--based on talent rather than streaming numbers--Flukten consists of four musicians from some of the most creative bands in Norway, a stylistically varied crowd including Hanna Paulsberg Concept, Atomic, Espen Berg Trio Trio and Trondheim Jazz Orchestra. The group--tenor saxophonist Hanna Paulsberg, guitarist Marius Klovning, bassist Bárður Reinert Poulsen and drummer ...

Family

By Gard Nilssen

Label: We Jazz Records
Released: 2023
Track listing: The Space Dance Experiment; Spending Time With Ludde; Letter to Alfred; Boogie Stop T?ffel; The Healing Force Of the Trojan Horse; Supersonic; Dolphin Disco; SP68.

Gard Nilssen's Supersonic Orchestra: Family

by Mark Corroto
September 30, 2023

Why can't all music be supersonic? That does not mean supersonic as in a speed exceeding that of sound, but sound that is sonically superlative. Drummer, composer, and bandleader Gard Nilssen's music is seemingly always sonically superb. His 17-piece Supersonic Orchestra was captured in 2022 at the Mondriaan Jazz Festival in Den Haag, Netherlands, for Family, ...

Hanna Paulsberg Concept: Daughter Of The Sun

by Chris May
April 7, 2023

Ever since Jan Garbarek put Norwegian jazz on the map in the late 1980s, and even more so after the international success of his singularly ascetic Officium (ECM) in 1994, the music has acquired a reputation for being, if not entirely lacking in passion, then at least emotionally detached. Since the millennium, with the emergence of ...

Gard Nilssen's Supersonic Orchestra: If You Listen Carefully The Music Is Yours

by Chris May
January 18, 2023

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 experimentalist, 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 ...

Velkommen H?p

By Hanna Paulsberg

Label: Odin Records
Released: 2021
Track listing: Velkommen H?p; Budeie Boogie; Framsyning; Barneblues; Mellomspill; Jonas Og Hvalen; Tennis Med Torstein; Bleik Myrk Legg; Pave Toten Totten; Blomstrene.

Hymn For Hope

By Mats Eilertsen

Label: Hemli
Released: 2021
Track listing: Little Thug; Oscuro; K; Sunrise; Circle Hymn For Hope; M; Sunday; August; Chiaro; Call; First; X.

Mats Eilertsen: Hymn For Hope

by Mark Sullivan
December 16, 2021

Norwegian bassist & composer Mats Eilertsen has done his best to stay active during the pandemic. His previous solo album Solitude Central (Hemli, 2021) was drawn from his captivating improvised performance during the 2020 Norwegian Digital Jazz Festival. Hymn For Hope is a quartet album, with Eilertsen's compositions augmented by a few brief collective improvisations. He ...