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Saxophonist, Sonic Explorer Casey Benjamin Dies at 45
Casey Benjamin, the alto saxophonist, vocalist, keyboardist and producer who stamped his distinctive sounds on the…
German-Afghan singer Simin Tander brought disarming depth and entrancing spirit to the Vossa Jazz Festival in Voss, Norway, on March 20 (Photo: Courtesy Vossa Jazz Fest)
(Photo: )A warm bath of synchronicity hit the lakeside town of Voss, Norway, in the heart of the 43rd annual Vossa Jazz Festival. The blissful sense of convergence of elements came courtesy of respected and increasingly international Hardanger fiddle master Nils Okland, during his contribution to the long history of the festival’s keynote commissioned work (or “Tingingsverket”).
There, before a full house on Saturday evening, Okland held sway over his expanded band (most of which is heard on his fine recent ECM album Kjølvatn), in an inspiring, high-profile example of the enlightened pact between Norwegian folk music and jazz sensibilities. And it took place at a festival that has done its part to champion that Nordic-jazz-folk liaison, and in the very town home to the prominent Norwegian folk music-leaning Ole Bull Academy. Okland himself studied and taught there, and has played many times in the intimate Osasalen, an important secondary venue for the festival.
Vossa Jazz 2016 opened with the somewhat anomalous booking of Dave Holland’s trio, with guitarist Kevin Eubanks and drummer Olbed Calvaire, in a jammy, pleasing enough hourlong, suite-like set. But American jazz only figures marginally into the programming plan or ethos of this generally Norway-minded festival.
Voss is a fine place to go for anyone curious about this thing called Norwegian jazz, a swath which this year ranged from the feistily cool post-Ornette acoustic quartet Cortex to hip jazz-metal guitarist Hedvig Mollestad. (She also played in thunder-lunged, r&b-influenced Bernhoft & The Fashion Bruises’ old-school closing set).
Young guitarist-composer-conceptualist Stein Urheim, winner of the Voss Jazz Prize in 2010, unveiled an ambitious, purposefully style-traversing commissioned work with a fetching moniker, “Traveling with the Natural Cosmolodic Orchestra.”
Tord Gustavsen, the ECM pianist of introspective but sometimes shallow-ish dimensions, nicely stunned the crowd with music from his new album What Was Said, mainly thanks to the genuinely captivating German-Afghan singer Simin Tander, often bringing disarming depth and entrancing spirit to settings of texts by Sufi poet Rumi.
Of special note from the up-and-coming camp: The Hanna Paulsberg Concept affirmed the saxophonist/leader’s growing reputation as a voice to keep tabs on (especially beyond her native Norway). With tasteful soloist wits and awareness of space and phrasing, a strong melodic sense as a composer, she led an impressive young group, highlighted by the exciting and imaginative drummer Hans Hulbækmo, also in the Moskus Trio and, recently, inducted in the Scandinavian left-end-jazz supergroup Atomic.
Another high point in the festival offerings came in the form of inspirationally improvisational and seductively irrational Sidsel Endresen, a Norwegian musical legend who refuses to rest on laurels, or structural comfort zones. She holds a unique place in Norwegian musical lore, as someone well known to the general pop-conscious public for her more mainstream work of decades back, and a brief flirtation with Nordic moody albums for ECM.
But for many years now, Endresen has held fast to a rigorous code of free improvisational experimentation, exploring a private domain of gestures and often abstract vocabulary, which includes cathartic extended vocal detours, enlightened gibberish and echoes of a folkloric sensibility only partly tethered to Norway, with possible links to alien life forms of her imagination. Suffice to say, Endresen occupies an expressive word of her own devising, although she happily invites duet partners or parties to engage in dialogues with her.
In Voss, Endresen was appearing as part of a long multi-artist show celebrating the Norwegian label Jazzland— a list that includes keyboardist Bugge Wesseltoft and electronics/remixologist master Jan Bang (the co-founder and director of the legendary, specialized Punkt Festival in Norway). The duo matchup of Endresen and Bang made for one of the stranger, unexpected and—for those of us who are believers—ecstatic events of the weekend.
Whereas normally, the singer works with instrumentalists, here, she provided the live putty that Bang then reshaped, remixed, looped and fed back parts into the mix. Between the already enigmatic vocal parts and tones naturally put forth by Endresen and Bang’s natural deconstructionist instincts, what resulted was a free-spirited giddy madness.
This year, Osasalen’s special and acoustically-warm wood-lined room played host to artists as diverse as the potent and memorable “free jazz” duet of reed player Frode Gjerstag Og and cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, the lyrical piano neo-trio-ism of the Eivind Austad Trio, and the distinctive dusky theatricality of Morten Qvenild’s “The Hyper(sonal) Piano” set. In a darkened room, with a headlamp over his heavily prepared piano and electronics labyrinth, Qvenild channeled some art pop-meets-sound world experimentalism turf where echoes of Bruce Hornsby, Robert Wyatt, Harold Budd, Conlon Nancarrow and Brad Mehldau (lite) merge, in an evocative fog.
A magnetic nucleus of Voss is its remarkable stone church (built circa 1277), the Vangskyrkja, site of a special “jazz mass” for the Sunday morning congregation and what was likely the festival’s greatest “secret treasure” show.
Ironically, marketing may have kept some away in the show dubbed “Tenor Battle” and sporting its protagonist, Håkon Kornstad in mannered 18th-century wig and attire/attitude. What might have appeared like a PDQ Bach-style novelty act was something else entirely. Said “battling tenors” are contained in one skin: Kornstad is both a fine tenor player, and an operatic tenor (verging on counter tenor), who miraculously drew together the worlds of opera arias and jazz expression, a rare feat of a jazz-ical crossover venture with artistic integrity and heart intact.
Extra-musically, the ambience of the church turned an unusual yet highly musical project into a special, site-specific, “only in Voss” experience.
(Note:To read a 2014 Editors’ Pick review of Dave Holland and Kenny Barron’s The Art Of Conversation, click here.)
—Josef Woodard
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