The Background Our planet houses over 8 billion humans at the moment, and we move around an awful lot. Migration is not new. It's been going on for millennia. The reasons may be geological, climate based, oppressive, work related or voluntary. This album focuses on one small aspect of migration, the eviction and subsequent migration of farmers and crofters from the Scottish highlands during the Clearances. The Album Internationally renowned harp and electronica duo FitkinWall follow threads of migration, loss and longing in their new album Uist. Composer Graham Fitkin has produced new work based on old Gaelic songs and Highland tunes. Scottish harpist Ruth Wall performs on concert, electro and wire-strung harps with Fitkin conjuring up mesmerising soundworlds with electronics, samples and loops. Ruth and Graham combine the very old with the very new placing ancient instruments in unusual contexts. The Music The music is constructed with care, precision and space to breathe - eery melodic fragments, pulsating patterns, sumptuous harmonies - drawn together in a beguiling but understated synthesis. Allusions can be drawn to new-classical, folk, even ambient and systems music, with hints of artists such as Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Lau or Haushka somewhere in the ether. FitkinWall Ruth Wall performs on wildly different harps - Gaelic wire-strung, Bray, Concert and Electro harps. Graham Fitkin uses a Moog Voyager, Ableton and various FX modules. Their work combines the very old with the very new. They provide unusual contexts for these ancient instruments. Their previous albums Still Warm and Lost, toured with live VJ, through the UK and Europe, before heading out to Japan. Uist has toured in the UK in 2024 and will tour mainland Europe in 2025 with a light installation from artist Peter Freeman. Both artists work independently too. Ruth has worked with Goldfrapp, Kathryn Tickell, RLPO, BBC Orchestras and film composers John Lunn and Clint Mansell. She tours extensively in venues from Radio City New York and Glastonbury Mainstage to Sydney Opera House and Roskilde Fest. Graham's music has been performed by artists such as Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, New York City Ballet, BBC Philharmonic, Yo-Yo Ma, Will Gregory, choreographer Wayne McGregor and artist Shezad Dawood. His music has been released by Decca, Sony, BIS, Naxos and many others. He has won three BASCA Composer Awards, an International Grand Prix Dance Music Award and the Royal Philharmonic Society Composer Award
Following the internationally acclaimed improvised solo piano album The Trondheim Concert and the digital album release The Nidaros Concert, NXN now release The Hamar Concert recorded in front of a live audience in The Hamar Concert Hall.
On the album Years of Ambiguity, experienced composer and jazz artist Kjetil Husebø has created music at the crossroads between ambient, drone and jazz. The grand piano has been replaced with synthesizers, samplers, electronics and programming. Internationally renowned musicians Arve Henriksen (trumpet) and Eivind Aarset (guitar) collaborates with him on several of the tracks. The moods on the album is cinematic and full of contrasts, alternating between being minimalistic and maximalist, sometimes light, sometimes dark. Musically oriented towards huge sonic landscapes, abstract sounds but also with a sense for melody. The album is recorded and mixed in the artist’s own Grandis studio in Oslo, Norway, and mastered by sound engineer Morten Lund. Coverart by designer Lucas Dietrich.
Ingi Bjarni is a pianist and a true Nordic artist. Coming from Iceland and traveling around the Nordics and Northern Europe to both perform and find new musicians to play with, he has created a fine blend of musicians from different countries to complete his musical vision. His music is clearly inspired by jazz traditions and nordic folksongs, still he has a distinct own sound. Farfuglar is proof to that.
Christina Sandsengen is an educated classical concert guitarist, and has performed in concert halls around the world. Solace is her debut album as a composer and the album highlights her technical skills as well as a wide range of contrasts, emotions and feelings. Sometimes dark and dramatic, then suddenly brighter and melodic. Christina says: “The classical guitar is the key to my unconscious world of emotions and thoughts, and so I put the classical guitar in the center and use different soundscapes and elements to highlight or enhance the colors and the expressions from the guitar, and I use a lot of imitation of church bells played on the guitar to capture the empty and painful feeling of a funeral.” The album consists of 13 tracks and invites the listener on a personal musical journey from dark and light, grief, passion, and pain. The melodic language of the music are similar to Norwegian folk music. Fredrik Falk has produced the album and also contributes with piano and soundscapes. Recorded by Ole Teigen in Crowtown recordings and mastered by Kenneth Amundsen. Artwork by Nihil.
Song Dust is the first trio recording from trumpeter Karl Strømme. Having toured as a member of the European Union Jazz Youth Orchestra, and recorded several albums as a member of the experimental outfit Peloton, Strømme released Dynalyd, for quintet in 2019. For his NXN Recordings debut he teamed up with exciting young musicians Gard Kronborg on acoustic bass and Per-Arne Ferner on guitar. Listeners will enjoy both nods to the Westcoast jazz as well as the Nordic cool, especially through the expressive trumpet inspired by the Chet Baker trio recordings on Steeple Chase. The traditional jazz trio would often include a drummer, but you won’t miss one on Song Dust. Besides a joyful percussive part on track 5, VM all musicians are given plenty of space and time to make beautiful soundscapes and passages throughout the album.
REVIEW:
“Nods to West Coast jazz and Nordic cool” is an excellent description of Song Dust, Norwegian trumpeter Karl Strømme’s debut date for the Naxos label NXN Recordings. It’s also Strømme’s first trio recording, and features the somewhat unusual trio lineup of trumpet, acoustic bass guitar (Gard Kronborg) and guitar (Per-Arne Ferner).
Strømme, who teaches at the Norwegian Academy of Music, has an extensive performing and recording history that includes touring with the European Union Jazz Youth Orchestra and, most recently, his well received 2019 quintet recording Dynalyd.
An easy comparison to Strømme is Chet Baker, in both his often airy tonal quality and his phrasing and material. He emphasizes that here with the opening track, the standard “Nature Boy,” which he presents quite naturally and freely, with only minor embellishments from bass and guitar behind his trumpet lines. But elsewhere he follows his own path, particularly in his penchant for playing trumpet and synth lines simultaneously. The second track “Opal” finds him pursuing this subtly on a mostly traditional sounding post-bop piece of lovely melodic lines.
It’s almost cheating to call this a trio, and I say that with a smile, but the synthesizer is truly a fourth instrument here. The electronic keyboard-trumpet pairing is quite explicit on the brief, languid “Dance Of The Cohort,” with burbling synth sounds nearly alone in accompanying Strømme’s horn. A few songs later, the similarly brief “0502Y” presents a dreamlike soundscape that includes a Rhodes-like keyboard in addition to shimmering synth and faux glockenspiel. The only track with explicit percussion, “VM” adds handclaps and hand drums for a Latin vibe behind an engaging trumpet improvisation that to me recalls Kenny Wheeler. Lots of that “Nordic cool” vibe comes through on the mysterious “One Two Trees” with some nice atmospheric guitar from Ferner and Strømme accompanying his horn with a unison line on the synth – again, very subtly, no prog bombastics here.
Kronborg provides solid and inventive rhythm throughout, and really displays his chops on a lovely, melodic solo on the title track, which finishes the album. My favorite is the rhythmically complex “Bela Waltz,” which only truly runs on waltz time for brief melodic choruses. Ferner’s guitar moves seamlessly from rhythm to melody and back again more than once here.
Atmospheric but never background music, Song Dust is consistently engaging, upbeat, cool modern jazz.
Leave your thoughts here is Mr Mibbler's third album following The Long Journey released in January 2021. Mr Mibbler is musicians and producers Thom Hell, Jørn Raknes and Vidar Ersfjord, and this time they have invited an incredible number of first-class Norwegian musicians to play around in their musical world. The guest musicians have been the starting point for the tracks and Mr Mibbler has built the songs around their contributions. Among the guest artists we find very exciting names such as Knut Reiersrud, Lindstrøm, Andreas Ulvo, Mathias Eick, Jan Bang, Bjørn Klakegg, Jørgen Munkeby, Sigmund Groven and Nils Petter Molvær, all experienced and acclaimed within their genres in Norway and internationally. This makes Leave your thoughts here a musical journey of different moods, exciting instrumentation and a wonderful mix of genres. You will hear folk, jazz, ambient and electronica performed by the very best musicians in Norway.
The aim of "Christmas songs" recorded by duo Thom Hell (vocals) and Andreas Ulvo (piano, synth) was to create something intuitive and with familiar and beloved Christmas songs; The performance should be unpretentious, contrary to how we are used to hearing holiday songs. In order to keep the nerve and spontaneity only one take of each song was made, with some overdubs where they later felt it was needed.
Andreas Ulvo (b. 1983), pianist and keyboardist from Eidskog in Hedmark. He has a master's degree in jazz and improvisation from the Norwegian Academy of Music. He is active with several own projects Andreas Ulvo ensemble, Eple Trio, Innlandet and his own solo project, with several releases. He has also worked with bands and artists such as Ingrid Olava, Mathias Eick, Solveig Slettahjell, Ellen Andrea Wang, Karl Seglem, and others. Thom Hell (b. 1976), is a multi-instrumentalist and vocalist from Hånesin Kristiansand. Has released 8 albums as a solo artist and won 3 Norwegian Grammy Awards: 2 as artist of the year and 1 as pop composer of the year. Has worked as a producer and starring Jonas Alaska, Matilda, Jonas Fjeld and Marte Wulff. Thom Hell has also participated in several Norwegian Music TV shows.
Memorabilia was written in 2016 followed by a premiere at JazzFest in Trondheim. The music is written by jazz bassist and composer Mats Eilertsen and performed by two trios: Mats Eilertsen Trio (Harmen Fraanje, piano: Thomas Strønen, drums and Mats Eilertsen, bass), and the vocal ensemble Trio Mediaeval (the acclaimed trio of Anna Maria Friman, Linn Andrea Fuglseth and Jorunn Lovise Husan), both known for numerous recordings for ECM. This recording was made in Newtone studio in Oslo January 2020. The music unites the two trios in a sacred, lyrical expression, giving the piano trio room to improvise and the vocal trio space to shine. The lyrics are a mixture of traditional masses and poems by the Norwegian lyricist Tor Ulven. About faith, doubt, nostalgia and time.
Exploring the haunting beauty of one of the Earth’s most exquisitely majestic landscapes, “Hidden Soul Of The Fjords” is a musical journey, an ‘Elemental-Sonic Soundscape’ artfully expressing the primal origins, mythic mysteries and life and death realities of the stark and stunning Fjords of Western Norway. Co-created by Norwegian Singer/Composer Heidi Torsvik and Grammy Nominated American Producer/Composer Lazerus Winter, the new double album includes performances from renown soloists: Karl Seglem (tenor sax and Bukkehorn), Stein Urheim (electric guitar), Benedicte Maurseth (Hardanger Fiddle), Alexander Grieg (Contrabass), David Chelsom Vogt (Violin) and drummer Ivar Thormodsæter. “Hidden Soul of the Fjords” is the first in a new “Hidden Soul Series” for Naxos International Records new subsidiary label NXN. Initially composed in an old wooden home on the edge of the fjord waters and including multiple field recordings and found sounds from travels throughout the region, “Hidden Soul Of The Fjords” album production touches the heart, mind and Soul with a unique musical vision that that might remind the listener of such diverse musical references as Arvo Part and Massive Attack. “Hidden Soul of the Fjords” seeks to bring the magic of one of the Earth’s greatest natural eco-systems to the all who listen in a one-of-a-kind ‘Elemental-Sonic Soundscape."
Memorabilia was written in 2016 by jazz bassist and composer Mats Eilertsen and premiered at JazzFest in Trondheim the same year. The work is written for two trios: Mats Eilertsen Trio (Harmeen Franje, piano; Thomas Stronen, drums; and Mats Eilertsen, bass), and the vocal ensemble Trio Mediaeval (the acclaimed vocal trio of the three sopranos Anna Maria Friman, Linn Andrea Fuglseth and Berit Opheim.) Recently recorded in Newtone studio in Oslo, the album is now available, and has been released alongside a concert in the Norwegian Opera House. The music unites the two trios in a sacred, lyrical expression, giving the piano trio room to improvise. The lyrics are a mixture of traditional masses and poems by the Norwegian lyricist Tor Ulven. Darkness and drama meet nicer views of life. About faith, doubt, and time. “Minutes, maybe hours, of your own existence. That you forgot, but I still remember. You live a secret life in someone else’s memory.” (Tor Ulven)
