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With the
formation of The Sea quartet in 1994, Manfred Eicher proposed a
new creative arena for Terje Rypdal, David Darling, Jon
Christensen and myself. We had six years of improvisational
exchanges together, and I recognised that my group music would
never be the same again. But the quartet was difficult to
administrate, with
David living in the U.S. and the other three of us working
continually with different ensembles. So Terje suggested we form
a duo, building on what we had experienced with the quartet, but
also bringing in some new elements from his and my latest
productions. When we launched the duo, in the small but lively
Belleville jazz-club in Oslo in 1999, we didn’t know that this
constellation would become our main touring focus in the years
ahead, taking us from Taiwan to Canada, from Italy to the
Shetlands, from Lanzarote to the North of Norway.
For me it was a
deep pleasure to work this way with Terje. Since my days as
mainly a classical pianist, I’d always found the duo format the
most agreeable - as I also do in ‘real’ life. Meeting persons
face to face is always challenging. The communication is so
direct, and the musical ideas are so easily adapted by the
receiver. There is nothing to disturb the dialogue. Even
socializing as three, makes talking – or making music - more
difficult.
Pleasure in the
work was also intensified by my pure and lifelong fascination
with the electric guitar. Even if I barely knew who the Beatles
were, after two years among long-haired fellow pupils howling
odd songs in the schoolyard, I understood that the 5 year elder
Terje Rypdal, at the same school where I would later experience
some of the nightmares of growing-up, was a rock’n’roll hero,
playing the hell out of his instrument. And when I, some years
later, listened to his first album “Bleak House”, I had serious
thoughts about my own classical music career, at that time
preparing for Bartók’s 3rd with the Oslo Philharmonic. Perhaps I
was already then, unconsciously, hearing the soundscape that the
electric guitar and the acoustic piano might create together. My
very first recordings for Philips were anyway always heavily
orchestrated for the guitar.
But Terje was
soon absorbed in his celebrated association with Manfred Eicher,
and even if I often used the same recording studio as they did,
and often said hello to them at Oslo’s Club 7, where musicians
from all over the world would congregate, it was not until 1989
that I dared approach Terje for a collaboration.. He was
friendly and encouraging, even if he said he had no time then.
When I tried my luck again in 1992, he said yes, and performed
my kind-of-a- guitar-concerto “Vandring mot havet” in Rosendal,
on the west coast of Norway. It was a thrilling experience.
Terje decided that this music should be presented for Manfred,
and I still recall the atmosphere of that late October evening,
when we sat in the bar at the West Hotel in Oslo, making our
first preparations for “Water Stories”. I felt the special
rapport between these old friends, who had experienced “Afric
Pepperbird”, “Waves” and “After The Rain” together, and felt
privileged to be a part of their musical plans.
Fifteen years and
five ECM albums later, Terje is now the musician with whom I’ve
worked most extensively, even if we both have been occupied with
many different projects along the way. The touring with Terje
has given our partnership musical continuity, and after so many
concerts, it is a pleasure to write these liner-notes, knowing
that the recording from Leipzig is also a document of our
special connection to ECM, of a shared fascination for melodies
and soundscapes, and of a close friendship which has found its
expression in airports, on long-haul flights, in dressing-rooms,
on the stage, and in late night hotel bars. Touring with Terje
is always talking with Terje.
The 14th October
2005 started very early for both of us. For Terje to reach the
first flight from Molde to Oslo, he has to get up at five
o’clock. Then it is a taxi to the ferry-dock over slippery and
narrow roads, then the ferry across the fjord, a second taxi to
the small airport, all the check-in-troubles that the fear of
terrorism has inflicted upon us, and then the flight to Oslo
Airport Gardemoen, where I always meet him at our special
meeting point close to Gate 44. I was also in early from
Bunnefjorden, close to Oslo, that morning, since our flight to
Frankfurt was an early one, with much transit-time before the
commuter flight to Leipzig.
These morning
conversations with Terje are always very intense, and also
filled with many of his incredible jokes. As we sit on our
respective aisle seats in the plane’s cabin, it can be difficult
for the stewardesses to pass between us, when Terje leans his
head towards me and begins talking about Norwegian politics –
all the betrayals and the fabrications of diverse politicians
and ministers. He always updates me on the progress of his
ever-lasting crime-novel plot “Weekend Killer”, in which, every
weekend, a famous Norwegian politician is bumped off, mostly on
account of his lies.
Terje lives on
the very edge of Norway, with big mountains, fjords, deer and
much wild-life and nature all around him. He has strong feelings
for this special country. When he speaks of it I often feel that
he is a much more literary person than me, even if I actually
write the novels. He has also an obsession with detail. Look at
the titles of his compositions over the years: there are some
short-stories hidden behind many of them.
Reaching Leipzig
after six to seven hours in airplanes and airports, we have to
go directly to the soundcheck. Terje is, at this time of the
day, always very concerned with the practical details. Will his
favourites, the Vox AC30-amplifiers, be on stage tonight? We
enter the Opera House two hours before the concert. I think we
both feel drained of energy at this point. We are not the big
tuxedo-stars, driven in from a luxury-hotel nearby. We are the
hard working “Melodic warriors”, as Terje says; fighting, year
after year, for our improvised, but melodic based music, on
different stages. Tonight it is Leipzig. Bach was in Leipzig.
The young Edvard Grieg was in Leipzig. We recognize the festival
atmosphere in the building. So many people everywhere. Terje
says hello to his friends in the band Oregon, who will perform
the same evening. Then we enter the stage. Terje puts up his
pedals and checks out the guitar and the connections, while I
wait for the tuner to be ready with the Bösendorfer. When he is
finished, I ask him if he thinks the instrument will hold the
tuning during the concert. I am not always the softest pianist,
and especially not when I am working with Terje. The tuner says
he thinks it will be fine. Yes, fine. On Terje’s part of the
stage, it is also fine. We go to the dressing room with a good
feeling. The energy is back. We like the building. We like the
sound. We like the people. Terje has something more to tell me
about his crime-plot. There is always much talk about music.
Terje suggests that I should start the concert with the
incredible lower strings of the Bösendorfer. And couldn’t I play
some Grieg in between? I agree. The promotor knocks on the door.
Then it is time. Then everything can happen. Then it is “Live in
Leipzig”.
Oslo 5. desember
2007
Ketil Bjørnstad |
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FLOATING –
On the year’s longest and brightest day in
the North, the 23rd of June 2004, what we Norwegians
call “Sankthansaften”, I was sitting with Wulf Müller and Yngve
Næss from Universal Music outside “Sult” (“Hunger”), a famous
bar and eating place, close to the old Rainbow Studio at
Grünerløkka in Oslo. Earlier the same day, I had recorded the
first part of the planned “The Rainbow Sessions”, bid farewell
to the old beloved studio and waited for the new one to take
shape. The solo-piano-project “The Rainbow Sessions” (a planned
triple-CD), had already formed in my mind, but what to do next,
on a larger scale? “Why don’t you make a recording in the
classical trio-format?” asked Wulf suddenly. “You have
never done that before.” No, that was true. I had avoided
the trio so far, perhaps because it is so challenging, and
perhaps also because it can make you, as a band-leader, run into
the danger of playing too many notes all the time. So far, the
piano-trio seemed scary to me, because in this concept the
melody so often is used just as an excuse for the pianist to
play ornamentally and improvise endlessly, without taking any
deeper care of the melody itself and of the compositions deeper
needs and structure. “But you could still think melodically”,
said Wulf, in his easy, friendly way. That sentence opened up so
much for me. Yngve nodded. This was also important. He knows me
so well.
So this was how the
‘Floating’-session started. Later that summer, Jan Erik
Kongshaug moved into his new Rainbow Studio, a wonderful room
with an incredible acoustic, far beyond what I dared to expect
and even better than the old studio was. It was encouraging to
see how the always humble Jan Erik was still searching for
perfection in every sense in his 60th year. More than
twenty years ago, he created “The Rainbow Sound”, recording with
distinguished producers and artists from all over the world, all
with different needs and aesthetic approaches. A few months
after moving into the new premises, one of his dreams came true:
a new Steinway D-model was bought for the new studio. It was an
honour for me to follow him to the Steinway-factory in Hamburg
and help him choose the right one. I concluded “The Rainbow
Sessions” on that new instrument, and, at the same time, made
plans for the trio-recording some months later. The brilliance
of a new Steinway is something very special. The quality of a
good piano makes you, as the player, more aware of your
possibilities, and Jan Erik, as a kind of silent co-producer,
telling you in his intelligent and discrete way if you are doing
a good job or not. In fact, he has by his way of working,
produced many more recordings than he has taken credit for.
A dream came true for me when
Marilyn Mazur and Palle Danielsson said yes to participate in
this trio-recording. Marilyn has her own, generous identity. And
because she does not work with traditional brushes, tightening
up the soundscape so much, she creates a lot of space for her
fellow musicians, and also brings her own artistic intelligence
and energy into the music. Palle Danielsson has been a hero for
me since the early Cornelis Vreeswijk-recordings and, of course,
since his early jazz activities in Sweden, with his incredible,
warm sound and his artistic wisdom. He brought his "small"
double-bass, well known from the "Belonging"- period, and
Marilyn brought her beautiful bells, cymbals and different
percussion instruments from all over the world, many of them
from Asia. I knew Palle from before, but Marilyn I had never
met. It is a strange thing to say “Hello” over a cup of coffee
in the morning, and then go into the studio and record three
tracks before lunch. When the first day ended, we were more than
halfway through the album, and after day two, we had finished
the recording. It was like when you meet someone and immediately
feel you have established a strong friendship.
The music itself gave us the possibilities.
It came to us - floating.
Sandnessjøen,
18th June 2005
Ketil Bjørnstad |