NORWEGIAN NEW WAVE JAZZ IN SZEGED
9 November 2006. - www.skandinavhaz.hu

The second day of the Szeged Jazz Festival this year focuses on new ambitions and aspirations of the jazz world. Ever since the spectacular entrance of Garbarek and Terje Rypdal, Norway has been considered the capital of European jazz music and we are fortunate enough to welcome three formations of the norwegian Rune Grammofon record label this year: In The Country, Susanna & The Magical Orchestra and Supersilent. The organisers are quite confident that these concerts will prove to be among the most daring and memorable shows in the Festival’s history.

Susanna & The Magical Orchestra

Susanna and The Magical Orchestra is in fact a duo with keyboard player Morten Qvenild and singer Susanna Karolina Wallumrød. (Morten is a former member of Jaga Jazzist and Shining, he quitted to concentrate on this duo and his own trio called In The Country. He is also a member of Solveig Slettahjell Slow Motion Orchestra and norwegian chart buster The National Bank, and has worked with Nils Petter Molvær and Norwegian pop diva Bertine Zetlitz.) Susanna and Morten started out as a band in 2000, and played mainly on the norwegian live scene while making their debut album “List of lights and buoys”. The album was released in Norway in February 2004, and some time later in Europe and in Japan, and received very good critics around the world.

“List of lights and buoys” contains highly personal interpretations of Dolly Parton´s “Jolene” and Leonard Bernstein´s “Who Am I” as well as nine originals that show a suprising degree of maturity, especially considering the writers young age and the fact that they operate in a landscape that requires a good deal of songwriting skills to hold your attention. Susanna And The Magical Orchestra combines the availability of the traditional popmusic, the strictness of the electronica and the improvisation in the jazzmusic.

Producers Andreas Mjøs (Jaga Jazzist) and Helge „Deathprod“ Sten (Supersilent) have in different ways and from different positions been crucial helpers in shaping the fi nal result. Helge Sten has also mixed the album. The duo have performed at festivals and concerts in many big cities, like Tokyo, Barcelona, Rome, London, Manchester, Cardiff, Dublin and Brüssels, always completely captivating the audience with their fragile soundscapes and Susanna´s intimate interpretations of originals and often surprising selection of cover songs.

In the country

Norwegian band In The Country are three young musicians, Morten Qvenild (grand piano) Roger Arntzen (double bass) and Pål Hausken (drums). The trio mostly play their own original compositions. The music is executed with use of space, sonority and initiative. They make beauty and tenderness, but it´s often strange and cunning at the same time.

Inspirations to be mentioned are Paul Bley, Ornette Coleman, Kenny Wheeler and Keith Jarrett. They are also huge fans of singer/songwriters like Dolly Parton, Damien Rice, Gram Parsons, Ryan Adams and Bob Dylan. Keyboardist Morten Qvenild is one of Norway’s most valuable utility players. He is the “orchestra” in the incredible post-Björk duo Susanna and the Magical Orchestra, writer and arranger for jazz singer Solveig Slettahjell, former member of pop-prog-jazz instrumentalists Jaga Jazzist and Shining, and part of chart-topping supergroup the National Bank. The trio’s debute album - „This Was the Pace of My Heartbeat“ (Rune Grammofon) - is a stunner. From the jazz world, Qvenild cites Paul Bley and Bobo Stenson, from classical Olivier Messiaen and Morton Feldman. He also has a great ear for pop melodies: his gorgeous solo cover of Ryan Adams’ woozy ballad “In my time of Need”, played with almost no extrapolation on the theme, renders the song a pure lullaby. Qvenild’s mixture of jazz phrasing, classical sensibilities and love of songcraft leads In The Country through 11 songs that rarely rise above a whisper but carry the emotional power of a screaming stack of Marshall amps.

The album is so focused that the tracks work together like a suite, but individual highlights abound. Qvenild plays Handel’s reverential lament “Laschia Ch’io Pianga” Casio SK-10, - it’s simultaneously post-modern and classic, just like the music of these wonderful young musicians. The trio attended as the first jazz group at the master studies of jazz/improvisation at the Norwegian Academy of Music and was elected as the "Young Jazz Musicians of the Year 2004". Their next album -"Losing Stones, Collecting Bones" - will be released on the 6th of November 2006, by Rune Grammofon worldwide.

Supersilent is, in a sense, the flagship band of Rune Grammofon Records, and seems to embody the label’s manifesto. The group was formed by the alliance of an existing improvisation group called Veslefrekk with ten years of playing history behind them. They played together for the first time, without any prior rehearsal, at the Bergen Jazz Festival in 1997 and immediately made headlines.

Supersilent

The musical success of the experiment convinced the participants that this had to be a permanent group, and they went into the studio to play many hours of non-stop improvisation from which their debut triple album, “Supersilent 1-3”, was ultimately drawn and released in January 1998. Supersilent was quick to build a reputation as one of Scandinavia’s most viscerally exciting concert acts. There is a dangerous unpredictability about their music, a sense that anything can happen. All parameters are open. From moment to moment, they can touch on elements of hardcore noise, imply industrial soundscapes, recall Miles at the Fillmore or Stockhausen in Donaueschingen, or play the most delicate and filigree ‘ambient’ sound-washes. There is a savage beauty in this music, with lyricism and disruptive fierceness counterbalancing each other.

In brief, Supersilent stretches definitions of jazz to near breaking point, yet at the same time its members’ improvisational skills are finely honed, all four players and Sten/Deathprod must be considered a player, too, not just the wild card - know how to listen, how to react and interact. And if jazz can still be considered the ‘sound of surprise’ then Supersilent fulfils the description. Helge Sten, Ståle Storløkken, Arve Henriksen, and Jarle Vespestad still don’t rehearse or even discuss their music. They meet only to play concerts or to record. In this group, Sten is credited with playing ‘audio virus’. He explains, “My instrumentation is made up of home-made electronics: old tape machines, ring modulators, filters, theremins, samplers and so on, and my usage of these devices is very unpredictable”. Supersilent records in Deathprod’s Audio Virus studio, packed with analog and digital hardware amassed originally for his electronica/ambient solo projects; the improvisers are not shy about experimenting with this technology but, as free music players, they insist on real-time applications only. Even in the studio, all the music is played live.

Overdubs have no place in the band’s modus operandi. - 2 - Keyboardist Ståle Storløkken is a full-fledged member of Terje Rypdal´s Skywards band. He studied at the Trøndelag Conservatory and has participated in projects with Louis Sclavis, Jon Balke, Lars Danielsson, Jon Christensen, Audun Kleive, Nils Petter Molvær, Anders Jormin and Tore Brunborg, and has composed commissioned music for the Kongsberg and Vossajazz festivals. Arve Henriksen is a graduate of the Trondheim conservatory and has been a freelance musician since 1989. He has played with many musicians familiar to ECM listeners, including Jon Balke (of whose Magnetic North Orchestra he is also an alumnus), Anders Jormin, Edward Vesala, Jon Christensen, Audun Kleive, Nils Petter Molvær, Misha Alperein, Arkady Shilkoper, Marc Ducret, Bjørn Kjellemyr and the Cikada String Quartet, as well as Sten Sandell, Frode Gjerstad, Peter Friis Nilsen, DJ Bjørn Torske and many other Scandinavians committed to free improvisation. He was also heard recently on No Birch with the trio of pianist Christian Wallumrød.

Drummer Jarle Vespestad has played in diverse rock, jazz and improvised contexts. He worked with Henry Kaiser and David Lindley during their ethnomusicological trawl through the far North, has recorded several albums with the experimental jazz-folk-rock band Farmer’s Market, and played with the jazz collective Embla Nordic Project. Jarle Vespestad has also played with Nils Petter Molvær, Jon Balke and Tore Brunborg, amongst others. The names of these players usually do not appear on their record covers. This is Supersilent music, collective work, group improvising, and not a matter of individual grandstanding. They never rehearse as a group and don't discuss the music with each other, meeting only to play concerts or to record. Supersilent music lives in a no-man's-land between the genres, somewhere between rock, electronica, jazz and modern composition. In fact, much of the music on their records appears to be written or at least arranged, again making it clear that these musicians communicate on a high, almost telepatic level. Needless to say, there are no overdubs. Everything is presented as it was performed in the studio.

Often being labelled jazz because of the improvising nature of the music and the fact that three of the members come from a jazz background, with “6” they are just as likely to attract followers of rock bands such as Goodspeed You! Black Emperor, Sigur Rós, King Crimson and (late) Talk Talk.

SZEGED JAZZ DAYS Szeged Youth Center 11th of November, 2006
Tickets: +36 70 235-2291
Daily ticket: 3000 HUF
Further information: info@privatemusic.hu