Karl Seglem is not the ordinary exbihitionist you typically find in the Jazz scene. Not once does his prominent guest and collaborator Nils Petter MOlvaer get lost in the overall sound. Seglem's music is a wide as the limits of Jazz itself.
Karl Seglem ist keiner jener Exhibitionisten, die man so oft im Jazz findet. Nicht einmal sein prominenter Gast Nils Petter Molvaer wird über Gebühr aus dem Klangkontext herausgehoben...... Metamusik, die weit über die Limits des Jazz hinausgeht.
"After an exciting autumn filled with a massive amount of new and wonderful Norwegian jazz, Karl Seglem tops it all with 'Urbs'. Fewmusicians, if any, have managed to generate as fertile a meeting point for tradition and innovation as the tireless west-coaster."
Bjørn Olav Nordahl, DAGENS NÆRINGSLIV
"In many ways, Seglem is now the most obvious heir of the previous Norwegian 'pioneers' abroad, such as Jan Garbarek and Mari Boine, in the way he combines a clear identity with a broad viewpoint and innovative compositions. Just listen to the hypnotic appeal of 'Urbs'."
Mode Steinkjer, DAGSAVISEN
Born and raised in the county of Sogn og Fjordane in the heart of Norway's fjordland, Karl Seglem plays tenor sax, and sax usually means jazz. "But I never felt really comfortable with the American jazz tradition, maybe because l'm a bad copier. And I didn't play much standard jazz material; I always picked Ornette, Monk and Mingus and the stranger, outer composers'".
In time he turned his attention doser to home, exploring traditional Norwegian song and fiddle music from his native region, and he began to collaborate with Hâkon HOgemo,a leading traditional player of hardingfele (hardanger fiddle,the distinctive fiddle traditional in some regions of Norway, with a shorter neck than a standard fiddle and bearing an additional four or more sympathetic strings that resonate to enhance the music's ringing drones). A string of projects, bands and albums ensued.
The music that emerged was, like the Norwegian traditional music that inspired much of it, a creature of melodic line and rhythm rather than the vertical structures of harmony and chords that prevail in the western classical tradition and much other present-day western music. It reconnects with the older layers of European music, and indeed starts to show some affinities with Arabic music, which is similarly non-chordal. Its textures are of air, stone, wood and bone, not the night-time, finger-snapping urban images of much American jazz.Seglem is still a tenor saxist, but his playing has the husky, vocal sound of traditional pastoral instruments, and indeed he also uses two of those, the bukkehorn, goat-horns; one a trumpet-horn and one sounded by a tied-on reed. Having found his native musical language, he speaks it fluently; the themes he uses often sound like traditional melodies, and indeed they sometimes are, but on Femstein they're all his own compositions.
Norway has a high-quality and very active music scene, a community in which genres can be crossed perhaps more easily than they can in countries with larger populations. In the old days musical styles and tunes would travel easily up the valleys, less easily over the mountains between them, so each valley would have, and to some extent still has, its own distinctive music.
Nowadays musicians mingle in its major cities, producing music that is infused with diverse ideas but has a very strong and ever-evolving Norwegian identity. Seglem's music is a fine example of this, and Femstein marks the birth of a new band, in which Seglem and Hogemo are joined by bassist Gjermund Silset and percussionist Helge Norbakken.These two, both pioneers of the new Norwegian approaches to spaciousness and unusual textures in the rhythm section, were long-time members of the magnificent, trail-blazing band of Sâmi singer Mari Boine,-and now perform with other leading Norwegian musicians. The album was recorded by sound engineer and electronic musician Reidar Skâr, a significant guiding hand in the new Norwegian music.
There have been composers who have claimed their music is a free spirit, purged of any influence of the past. It's never true, of course; we all carry around with us a personal tradition made up of all we've ever heard, and it's often the musicians who accept and understand this the most deeply who make the most distinctive and communicative music.
Andrew Cronsha
« Hide Description
A - B
G - J
