Elevator music

Sax man Eirik Hegdal is all over the place these days, participating in several bands and projects, and playing on lots of records.
Not too long ago I mentioned En En En, and let me suggest you listen to Team Hegdal "Vol. 1" too, with André Roligheten (sax/bass clarinet), Rune Nergaard (double bass) and Gard Nilssen (drums) and Zanussi Five´s "Ghost Dance", where Hegdal is in a band with Rolf Erik Nystrøm (alto sax), Jørgen Mathisen (tenor sax), Per Zanussi (double bass) and Gard Nilssen (drums). All three albums were released in 2010.

But today´s blog post is about "Elevator" (Øra 2010) with the Alpaca Ensemble. The music was recorded live at the Trondheim Chamber Music Festival in 2008, so I guess it is chamber music then! It reminds me of some kind of soundtrack, and that is quite fitting, because an important part of this work is a dream like story, written and read by improvising poet Matt Burt.
Poetry reading on albums is not my first choice, but it works just fine here. The story is about a strange trip in an elevator, quite fun really, and Burt is a very good reader (Chicago style), so I think this will stand repeated listening.
Buy the CD version, and you will get the printed story too.

These people play on the album: Matt Burt (words), Sigrid Elisabeth Stang (violin), Marianne Baudouin Lie (cello, voc), Else Bø (piano, celesta), Eirik Hegdal (sax), Ole Jørgen Melhus (flutes), Jovan Pavlovic (accordion), Michael Francis Duch (bass), Lars Sitter (percussio) and Tor Haugerud (drums, percusion).

And I really like the cover too, designed by Birgit Rostad.