you are the Ambassador of the legendary Nordic Sounds. How it came about since the 1970s, to the wonders of this soon-hyped sounds, first of all, to people like Jan Garbarek, then in a second wave with you and others?
The Norwegian jazz scene was early on especially. Since the beam were to a far-end musicians such as Jan Garbarek and Terje Rypdal. But one must always keep in mind that Norway’s population is comparatively a very, very small country.
It has less inhabitants than Switzerland …
… not even 6 million. In Norway, one often feels like being on the edge of the world. We Norwegians do things on our own way. Jan Garbarek about was inspired by American Jazz, but he saw himself primarily as a Norwegian with an own identity. This has planted in us younger musicians in the 1990s, even we were looking for our own Sound. We exchanged us in the music scene in Oslo is relatively small and manageable. We visited all the same music places; and to this day I know almost all the musicians in Oslo personally.
Norway Is in the tendency of a closed country? Until today, it is not also in the literature there are many books to Norway.
Also, some of the music came to Norway, at least, it used to be: In Stockholm or in Copenhagen in the 1960s, world-famous American jazz musicians have lived as Dexter Gordon and the local scenes influenced – up to Oslo but they never came. We had to find our own way.
1996 had Wesseltoft and his “New Conception of Jazz” in the world sit up and take notice: Video: Youtube
your “New Conception of Jazz” fed in the late 1990s of electronic club sounds: Techno arrived in Oslo so but.
Yes, of course. So we are complete again. Music is something else than literature. Literature needs to be translated, music is more accessible, it is a universal language. By the way, as we began our North-to-play of Electronic Jazz, we came on our tours in the rest of Europe on similar musical aspirations, such as in the case of Erik Truffaz.
Norway get a lot of praise for its promotion of culture.
I was never a particular beneficiary of the Norwegian support to culture. Jan Garbarek also not. Sometimes it is helpful if you have to fight for your music! But in fact, we have this subsidy system. It is also important to support music with Norwegian roots, and to reflect on them. You will otherwise be overwritten quickly, “” of the music industry.
Eased to a well-balanced social climate, the Norwegian cultural flowering?
(Hesitates) In the art, it is important that you have something for which to fight. The most interesting Phase of modern British music, for example, was, in my eyes, just the time of Margaret Thatcher. Punk and the successor to music understood itself as an Anti-movement against Thatcher. Art will always remain a kind of combat. In Scandinavia the case is in this relationship again otherwise. We take people as the painter Edvard Munch, or the writer August Strindberg: you have led something of an internal struggle. I believe that we have in Scandinavia right to the hard conditions of life. In the Winter it is very cold, very dark. It is really depressing. Munch or Strindberg also report against this Background, of your inner Struggle. Perhaps the two speak for Scandinavia at all.
There is also the Black Metal scene in Norway springs to mind. In the satanic noise were flared even churches.
Burning churches were not so common in Norway. The Black Metal-movement, however, was actually a “big thing”. But also the Scandinavian Black Metal was born from the desire to have my own identity.
Some Norwegian jazz musicians-colleagues also sound very black, almost to quiet slower Black Metal. One of the finest early albums of guitarist Eivind Aarset is typically “Electronique Noire”.
Scandinavian music is looking for the Melancholy, a “darkness”. I think, however, that it is an inner darkness. Eivind’s Album is really nice, it was one of the first albums on my own Label Jazzland.
Wesseltoft about his plans with Rymden. Video: Youtube
your new Trio Rymden with Bassist Dan Berglund and drummer Magnus Öström, both of which were part of the cult trio of the 2008 late pianist Esbjörn Svensson, and they occur in Zurich is now looking for its own way: you say that you wanted to be with him, not US Jazz the manner of Keith Jarrett’s playing, it is more of a Rock Approach.
Exactly. What doesn’t mean I love Keith Jarrett.
In your “New Conception of Jazz” was the electronics is crucial. If you are now rocking, you mean, that has survived the electronic club culture?
Still I hear a lot of electronic music. But I have spent many years to combine Jazz with Electronic. Somehow I have the feeling that This is behind me. For Rymden I was looking for new sources of inspiration. The Scandinavian rock scene plays a role in the German Krautrock of the early Seventies, Old-School Hip-Hop, or even classical music. I also wanted to have electronic Beats and more. The base of Rymden the Sound of the acoustic Jazz-piano-trio forms.
you are using, but often also the Fender Rhodes Piano.
The Fender-Rhodes Piano was the first Instrument I bought as a Young. An acoustic piano, I had only 22. Significantly, for me, a combination of acoustic and electronic Sounds was always. To merge the different sound qualities, seemed to me always very interesting.
“The energy flows in the process: that’s it.”
Rymden sounds more open and unplanned as Esbjörn-Svensson-Trio. To be a jazz musician, does this mean that the music should be improvised, and an adventure to be?
Improvisation is the heart of jazz music. You power Jazz to the unique art form. In the case of a Film or a book is prepared for the viewer or reader to have been done. As a jazz musician, but one creates his music directly in front of the audience. This is fantastic – even for an audience: It can watch how the music is developed. Anyway, I’m always more interested in that I’m in an intense dialogue with the audience.
Improvisation coupled with their relationship to the audience?
An experience that I improvise in front of different audiences is also different. In General art is a Meeting between a work of art and an observer. The energy flows in the process: that’s the point. It makes the value of art and music.
Rymden (Wesseltoft, Berglund, Öström): concert at the Zurich Festival Jazznojazz, Wednesday, 30. October, 20 at, in the Gessnerallee. The four-day Jazznojazz Festival opened on same day at 19 PM with a concert by the American tenor Charles Lloyd, saxophonist. Whole Program: Jazznojazz.ch
Created: 28.10.2019, 13:52 PM
