NORWEGIAN
WOULD
Defying
tradition and geography, Norway (Oslo 60 N.), a country of five
million, has become one of the hot spots in jazz. Its music, born
in the extremities of the sun’s give and take, is as purposeful
and clear as a cobalt-blue sky on a brisk summer day. For listeners
for whom “break on through” and ambience are at a
premium, the long trek north is more than handsomely rewarded
at the end of the jazz
festival season.
As a
continuously morphing musical form that holds up a mirror to the
world as it turns (or spins out of control), we shouldn’t
be at all surprised that jazz has travelled a long way since it
was founded in New Orleans at the turn of the twentieth century.
If we quite naturally associate early New Orleans jazz with Dixie
where hot and humid predicted hotter than July jazz, what does
climate foretell of Norwegian jazz? Do cool and remote translate
into a kind of polar-blue jazz, or an identifiable north-of-60-sound
we can wrap our ears around?
The 33rd
edition of the Montreal
International Jazz Festival (June 28th
to July 7th) will be exploring just that -- and Norway’s
very special contribution to jazz -- in its celebrated Invitation
Series, where every year an established musician is invited to
perform a series of concerts in a variety of combos over a four
day period.
This
year’s special guest is pianist Tord Gustavsen (Oslo), whose
very particular soundscapes have won him significant critical
acclaim as well as an international following.
In the
first of four concerts that take place from July
4th to the 7th
, he’ll open with his regular quartet and music from his
most recent album, The Well. The following night he’ll
perform solo, then in a trio, and on the final day he will partner
with the sweet and soulful Solweig
Slettahjell, whose mood indigo is guaranteed to
put a spell on you – and more. If her unpronounceable name
draws a blank and you’re wondering what to expect, think
of a Nora Jones-Sophie Hunger fusion with an irrepressible alt-side.
However
complex and diverse is the world’s music, there is no getting
around the fact that our preferences are very much determined
by disposition and circumstance. When the real world feels like
it is too much with us, we often turn to music for sanctuary and
solace. If there is such a thing as distinctly Norwegian jazz,
it may be nothing more than the antithesis of everything Norwegian,
or what Norwegians want to be temporarily relieved of: endless
winter nights, a climate that on its good days only flirts with
summer, and the dulling effects of institutional certainties (the
twin tyrannies of propriety and orderliness).
Sometimes
jazz is so thick and furious and abstract it’s like a wall
you can’t break through. The listener finds himself on the
outside desperate to get in, while the conflicted musician, desirous
of an audience, can’t stop himself from wielding his instrument
like an automatic weapon.
The
group “took each song apart, dismantling the melody, painstakingly,
painfully, sappers dismantling a lie, and then each single component
around so many times it disintegrated. They put it together
again from nothing, notes and fragments of notes, bent notes
and breaths, squawks on the horns and the reeds’ empty-lidded
beating of keys. By the time the melody reappeared, one was
sick with longing for it.”(from The Winter Vault
by Anne Michaels).
Contemporary
Norwegian jazz rejects that kind of enraged, tight-fisted jazz
that promises a bruising to even the most battle hardened membrana
tympani. In its highly malleable structures, tempo and expansive
chains of melody are irresistible gaps and caesurae that more
and more listeners are turning toward as the real world turns
a cold shoulder.
In especially
his solo work, Tord Gustavsen compositions are distinguished by
their dreamy, airy intervals and sublime breaches that invite
listeners to enter and discover his very cozy and gratifying alt-spaces.
With a nod to the Debussy, Gustavsen’s mission statement
might read, “music is the space between the notes.”
Whether solo or in combo, his music is floatational, where pitch
and vibe conspire to produce breathless etherscapes and mind states
where matter and anti-matter dissolve into each other. The compositional
simplicity belies the subtle intent which is to transport the
listener to somewhere over the bow and into blue. His music can
be haunting, soothing and very otherworldly. As soundscapes we
have come to associate with the Gustavsen name, and by extension
Norwegian music, we note the evolution of a distinct sound around
which festivals are programmed for increasingly international
audiences. When Gustavsen is in his compositional element, finding
and healing himself through writing, his music seems to unfold
laws whose discreet purpose is to calm the agitated mind and restive
heart. That he has found new ways for silence and notes to accommodate
each other is his most singular accomplishment to date.
To the
charge that Gustavsen’s music is too predictable or derivative,
combining what is best in early Jarrett and Gaberek with New Age,
the devil is in the detail which in his case is comprised of those
ever so subtle but arresting compositional twists and turns whose
cumulative effects make you realize that his invention is never
at the expense of the mood and atmospherics we associate with
his generic sound. We return to his work because he has created
an expectation his music is best qualified to satisfy, which of
course is the aim of every composer but achievement of only the
few.
Since
Montrealers are often the first to recognize and appreciate music
born in Europe, we should not be surprised to learn that Tord
Gustavsen’s appearance at this years Montreal Jazz Festival
will be his third.
