Nils Økland Band

The band: Nils Økland Band

The album: Kjølvatn (ECM 2015)

The musicians:
Nils Økland (Hardanger fiddle, violin, viola d´amore)
Rolf-Erik Nystrøm (alto and baritone saxophones)
Sigbjørn Apeland (harmonium)
Mats Eilertsen (double bass)
Håkon Mørch Stene (perc, vibraphone)

The music:
Either folk or jazz with some contemporary spices? Or perhaps not? A Norwegian reviewer called it folk for jazz lovers.
It´s very, very beautiful and melancholic, but it will still make you happy.
A must listen.

POING and Maja Ratkje live in Belgium

How about John Lennon´s "Working Class Hero", with POING and Maja S.K. Ratkje, live in Vooruit, Ghent (Belgium) in June 2013?

Poing is Rolf-Erik Nystrøm (sax), Frode Haltli (accordion) and Håkon Thelin (bass).

More videos on Frode Haltli´s YouTube channel: Brecht/Weills "Der Song von Mandalay", "Ein Liebersversuch" and "L'Internationale" + "Solidaritätslied" together with 100 singers.

Poing and Maja Ratkje play Bowie

poing and maja ratkje: rock n roll suicide from ABWrecking on Vimeo.

Maja S. K. Ratkje and POING - Rolf-Erik Nystrøm (sax), Håkon Thelin (bass) and Frode Haltli (accordeon), do David Bowies "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide", at Cafeteatret in Oslo May 1.

The video is filmed from above, but who cares!?

Rolf-Erik Nystrøm in Cape Town

I fell for this concert video of beach boy Rolf-Erik Nystrøm (Poing, Zanussi 5)! He is really trying to impress a quite relaxed audience during the Edge of Wrong festival in Cape Town (not part the official program I think).

Edge of Wrong is coming to Kristiansand in September, with Mari Kvien Brunvoll, Vertex with Axel Dörner and the very same Rolf-Erik Nystrøm on the program. More to come on their web site I guess? Artists, dates etc?

Zanussi 13 Live

Moserobie already released "Zanussi Five" (2005), "Alborado" (2006) and "Ghost Dance" (2010) by bassist Per Zanussi´s band Zanussi Five (a previous blog post here). Now they are raising the stakes with Zanussi 13! This is a live recording from Nasjonal Jazzscene (Oslo January 2011), and if you want a genre to describe it, try big band free jazz, or something like that. We get Ornette Coleman´s ("Street Woman") and Fela Kuti´s ("Johnny Just Drop"), and the rest are compositions by Per Zanussi.

This is great stuff! Listen to a couple of tunes over here:
Zanussi 13 Live-Body and Zeuhl
Zanussi 13 Live - Amorous Parade

And just check out the list of musicians before you run on over to your favorite music shop:

Eirik Hegdal – Baritone sax / clarinet
Klaus Holm – Alto- and baritone sax / clarinet
Mikko Innanen – Alto sax
Per Oddvar Johansen – Drums
Martin Kuchen – Alto sax
Jonas Kullhammar – Tenor sax
Jørgen Mathisen – Tenor sax/clarinet
Kjetil Møster – Tenor sax, clarinet and percussion
Gard Nilssen – Drums
Rolf-Erik Nystrøm – Alto sax
Stian Westerhus – Guitar
Per Zanussi – Double bass

All Ears 2012 over

Oslo´s improv festival All Ears 2012 is over.
Three nights with four to five concerts each, and one afternoon concert, organized in a very relaxed but professional way (as usual!)
I was still in Bergen Thursday night, but Friday turned out to be great. Let me mention three out of four concerts:
Barry Guy did an absolutely stunning solo concert, playing his own compositions, a Charlie Mingus tune and 100% improvised stuff (if such a thing exists).
Antoine Chessex (sax) and Okkyung Lee (cello) did a wonderful set and Rolf Erik Nystrøm (sax), Kjetil Gutvik (g) and Steve Noble (dr) ended the evening with an energetic show. Nystrøm even played the baryton lying down on the floor.
Organizer Lasse Marhaug told us that the musicians had been eating the traditional Norwegian dish "gammelost" ("old cheese") backstage, and this just might explain Nystrøm´s behavior.

For me Saturday evening was a long evening´s journey into Evan Parker (sax), Barry Guy (bass) and Paul Lytton (dr), who got on stage after midnight and played a great concert. A few of the audience had already left, but those still present were impressed! All of them!

The first picture has got nothing to do with the festival (i think!), but the second is of Barry Guy
It was quite dark during several of the concerts, but I just might find a couple of (close to) focused pictures in a couple of days, and will add a Flickr link here.

All Ears 2012

How a bout a festival for improvised music in Oslo (Norway) in the middle of January? Yes? Anyway, the program for All Ears 2012 (12 - 15 January) is here! The festival is organized by
Guro Moe, Paal Nilssen-Love, Jon Rune Strøm and Lasse Marhaug. Looking good!

ALL EARS 2012:THURSDAY JANAURY 12 @ Fabrikken:

SAKA (Jon Rune Strøm / Dag Erik Knedal Andersen / Kristoffer Alberts)

David Stakenes / Raymond Strid / Christine Sehnaoui Abdelnour / Patric Thorman

Activity Center (Burkhard Beins / Michael Renkel)

Void Ov Voices (Attila Csihar)


FRIDAY JANUARY 13 @ Fabrikken:

Barry Guy

Vilde Sandve Alnæs / Lisa Dillan / Nina De Heney

Kenneth Kapstad / Sveinar Hoff

Antoine Chessex / Okkyung Lee

Rolf Erik Nystrøm / Ketil Gutvik / Steve Noble


SATURDAY JANUARY 14 @ Fabrikken:

Bill Orcutt

Andy Moor / Anne James Chaton

Thomas Lehn / Marcus Schmickler

Arto Lindsay

Parker/Guy/Lytton


SUNDAY JANUARY 15 @ Henie Onstad Kunstsenter:

Kjell Bjørgengen / Keith Rowe

First of May with Poing and Maja Ratkje

I already warned the ruling classes about the CD "Wach Auf!", and now it´s here! Maja S. K. Ratkje and Poing have been on a short tour to promote the album, and they ended in Bergen on the 1st of May.

The venue was almost packed with young revolutionaries and an old guy (no names), all of us enjoying the music from Frode Haltli (accordion), Rolf Erik Nystrøm (saxophone), Håkon Thelin (bass) and Maja Ratkje (vocal, flute (?), harmonica). They played most of the songs on the album, and some more. The record is fine, but the concert was really wild. The excellent band did their national anthems, worker´s songs, punk songs and folk tunes with energy and a tiny bit of irony. One of the best moments of the show was without irony tough, when Ratkje and  Thelin did the traditional song "Mining for gold". Beautiful!
The encore was "25 minutes to go", better known by Johnny Cash.

(Sorry about the sound and lights on the video, not top quality, I know).

Wach Auf!

Be prepared, and look to Norway! The revolution might finally happen!
Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje and the boys of POING, Frode Haltli, Rolf-Erik Nystrøm and Håkon Thelin, are all on the people´s side, releasing a flaming red album and doing concerts around the 1st of May.
On the album "Wach Auf!" (Øra 2011) we will hear improvisations and radical arrangements of revolutionary songs like "Solidaritätslied" and "Kanonensang", and the uproar will follow this route: Trondheim (28/4), Inderøy (29/4), Oslo (30/4) and Bergen will fall into the hands of the revolutionaries on the very 1st of May!
Ask yourselves if you are on the right side, now!

Zanussi Five

What a great band Zanussi Five is! Saturday evening, me and a couple of other old guys, got to see them at the student´s jazz club in Bergen, in a house almost packed with young students. The band taught us a lesson on energetic, well arranged jazz with lots of room for improvisation.
These fine gentlemen played: Per Zanussi (b), Kjetil Møster (sax), Jørgen Mathiesen (sax), Eirik Hegdal (sax) and Gard Nilssen (dr).  I thought I heard some Soft Machine inspiration in there, but it might have been the beer of course.  Anyway, check them out on YouTube, where someone posted a video from yesterday´s concert. I think the tune is "Body and Zeuhl" from Zanussi Fives´quite new and quite fine album "Ghost Dance".
The band left the stage after playing a hot Fela Kuti song as an encore.

Zanussi Five have released three albums so far (as far as I know):
"Zanussi Five" (Moserobie, 2005), "Alborado" (Moserobie, 2006) and "Ghost Dance" (Moserobie, 2010).
On the first two albums Per Zanussi (b), Kjetil Møster (sax), Rolf-Erik Nystrøm (sax), Eirik Hegdal (sax) and Per Oddvar Johansen (dr) are playing, while Jørgen Mathisen replaces Møster and Gard Nilssen replaces Johansen on "Ghost Dance".