Category Archives: music videos :: jazz

Sidsel Endresen :: singer, composer and poet

photo copyright: cf-wesenberg@foto.no, all rights reserved

Sidsel Endresen has been at the forefront of the Norwegian music-scene for more than two decades. Her work has spanned genres from jazz-fusion and jazz-rock in the 80’s to free-improvisation and electronics. Sidsel has performed with Norwegian and international big bands, choirs and symphonic orchestras, worked within multi-media performances, theatre and dance and collaborated with various Norwegian poets. In international media she has been labelled La Grande Dame of the Nordic poetic chamber-jazz, although she does not consider herself a jazz-singer in the strict sense of the term. Endresen has always moved in new directions constantly renewing her music and her approach to the traditional role and function of the singer. She has worked extensively with her voice as an instrument and has developed a distinctive vocal improvisational style with abstract, phonetic language based on her exploration of the pure sound-aspect of the human voice. Endresen is today considered a major influence on a whole new generation of singers. (edit from the Institute for living voice website)

sidselendresen.com
discography on ECMrecords.com
discography on Jazzlandrecordings.com

nils petter molvaer :: innovative trumpeter and jazz composer

The Norwegian trumpeter Nils Petter Molvær is one of the best innovative musicians on the contemporary jazz scene. His compositions are the fascinating mélange of styles that change between ominous ambient sounds and hard breakbeat, along which atonal screeching sounds of guitars and spacey sound effects are combined with melancholic melodies of deep intensity. Molvær’s début album Khmer from 1997 is probably the most unusual ECM album released in the ’90s, because Molvær’s music is not eschewing the record label’s typical musical aesthetics well-known for elevated chamber-jazz. With his Khmer EP he “subverted the traditions of Europe’s most revered jazz label by the sheer force and beauty of his music, to produce an album of bold organic-electronica, recasting the spirit of Miles Davis’ ‘Bitches Brew’ for a new jazz generation and a new century.” (edit from Molvær’s website). He has recorded 8 solo albums since, for more info follow this link.

photo ©Joerg Grosse Geldermann, all rights reserved

Click photo to watch the music video Song of Sand directed by Pierre-Yves Borgeaud.

Click here to watch an extract from DVD Molvaer Live (Universal, 2001), that was recorded at his concert during the Technics Jazzport Festival in Hamburg, Germany.

www.nilspettermolvaer.com
www.ECMrecords.com

Eivind Aarset :: traditional non-traditionalist guitarist

The Norwegian guitarist Eivind Aarset is an inventor and creator of extrovert sound tapestries and generates almost spheric clouds of energy with the help of his instruments, variable effect pedals and a computer. Besides working with his own band “The Sonic Codex Orchestra” Aarset has also worked in the bands of Nils Petter Molvaer and Bugge Weseltoft and can be heard on their most important works as a master of the musical texture and, as he puts it eloquently, a “traditional non-traditionalist”. Carina Prange talked to Eivind Aarset for Jazzdimensions.

C.P.: A general question to start with: soundscapes, energy, melody, texture … which role do these aspects have in your music? Do you have a personal definition for them?
E.A.: Well, if you add harmony as well, I guess these are the building blocks I use when I make music. Soundscape and texture are parts of the same thing for me. It is the sensual perception of the music, the physical presence. Energy is what the music needs to come alive. I love good melodies, but I can also easily enjoy music without any obvious melodies. This is probably reflected in my music: sometimes melodies are very important and sometimes not that important. Texture and energy, at the other hand, are always important.

C.P.: In one of your interviews you mentioned that you see yourself in the group of people who are not going with the established, traditional sound of the electric guitar. Are there fellow non-traditionalist guitarists you feel related to?
E.A: I think everybody is inspired by someone or something and have their set of references. And in that sense everybody are traditionalists. But I guess in a classic “jazz” sense I am still a non-traditionalist. I feel more related and inspired by guitar players like Pete Cosey, David Torn, Nels Cline, Adrian Belew, Christian Fennesz, Hilmar Jensson or Daniel Lanois than by more conventional jazz players.

C.P.: When does the non-traditional start to become a tradition?
E.A: As I said earlier, I think no one is outside a tradition and I don’t mind that at all. But it is the museum approach to music that doesn’t appeal to me. I think it is boring when music becomes a set of rules what is correct and what is not and the aim is becoming something like how to sound like, for instance Miles, James Brown or Hendrix … Well I am sure you can learn a lot from it, but personally I think the original will always sound better! I read somewhere that Gustav Mahler once said that “Tradition is the passing on of fire and not the adoration of ashes.” (edit from Jazzdimensions)

www.eivindaarset.com
last.fm/Eivind Aarset

Click photo to watch the music video with Eivind Aarsen performing live the Wake up call from his album Electronique noire – light extracts.

bill evans :: rare recordings and 2 interviews

Bill Evans Trio: “The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings from 1961″( Riverside (3RCD-4443-2): [From the press release]: “The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings: Bill Evans Trio. All five sets performed by the Bill Evans Trio on June 25, 1961, at the Village Vanguard club in New York City were recorded, resulting in what are recognized as some of the greatest live recordings in the history of jazz. The trio, consisting of Bill Evans (piano), Paul Motian (drums) and Scott LaFaro (bass), has been credited with redefining jazz piano trios by including the bass and drums as equal partners rather than a rhythm section accompanying a piano soloist. The performances were the last by this lineup of the trio because LaFaro was tragically killed in a car crash ten days later.” To see more details about this release click here.

Bill Evans Trio and Guests: Nice, 1978 (1101 Distribution): 2-disc CD set containing a live performance of 17 tracks recorded in Nice (France) in July 1978. A very rare recordings, performed by an unusual trio that never made a studio album featuring drummer Philly Joe Jones and bassist Marc Johnson, joining them Lee Konitz for three amazing quartet tracks and Curtis Fuller for a marvelous quintet version of “Lover Man”. Another added combo is Stan Getz & Christian Escoude with the trio and Fuller in the finale on “All the Things You Are”. To see more details click here.


Ahmad Jamal :: The Complete Ahmad Jamal Trio Argo Sessions

Ahmad Jamal’s technique, dynamics and control as a jazz piano player are something to behold, but his ability to manipulate what comes out of the piano is extraordinary. Like only the greatest of improvising artists, Jamal is a master musical architect, realizing what his mind conceives with seeming ease. He certainly exercised a profound influence on pianists and his trio set a new standard for what the piano trio in jazz would aim for and achieve. His knack for finding obscure but viable material which lent itself to a jazz treatment was equal to that of Sonny Rollins and Jimmy Rowles. But when Ahmad put an overlooked tune into circulation, it often stayed in the jazz repertoire forever thereafter. And with songs like “Poinciana” and “Billy Boy,” it was Jamal’s unique and imaginative re-arrangement of the tune which would become the standard form with which to play the piece.

Much like Miles Davis (who incidentally was greatly influenced by him), his influence is felt in music that attempts to replicate his and in great music that sounds nothing like his. But unlike musicians of similar or even lesser impact, the music of the 1957-62 Ahmad Jamal Trio has been mysteriously and distressingly hard to come by, even in the “reissue everything” era of the Compact Disc. (All About Jazz)

A special edition of collected Jamal’s works comes on 9 CDs and it’s been released on Mosaic record label in limited 5000 copies: The Complete Ahmad Jamal Trio Argo Sessions (Limited Edition Box Set)