Terje Isungset and Arve Henriksen - World of Glass
(All Ice Records 1409. CD Review by Peter Jones)
Somewhere out there, if there are aliens – intelligent, friendly ones – they probably make music like this. And if you can imagine the aliens working in collaboration with some equally intelligent species from our own planet, such as whales, you may begin to get a feel for World of Glass, by Norwegian minimalists Terje Isungset and Arve Henriksen. Saxophones, trumpets, pianos, drums, 2-5-1 sequences and even conventional melodies are all distinctly lacking on this album. As the title suggests, glass is the key component: all the instruments used were made from glass by students from the Estonian Academy of Arts. The album was largely recorded in front of a live audience in Tallinn.
The project was Isungset’s idea, but the better known half of the duo is Arve Henriksen, whose delicate and intensely moving music on the 2004 album Chiaroscuro brought him to the attention of many in the UK. A trumpeter and vocalist, Henriksen has worked with numerous avant-garde and modernist musicians from Scandinavia, including minimalist trailblazer and fellow Norwegian Terje Rypdal. He has collaborated with David Sylvian, Laurie Anderson and Gavin Bryars, and is currently one third of a trio called Supersilent. He visited London in 2012 and again in 2014 with the vocal group Trio Mediaeval. read more: http://news360.com/digestarticle/1ViKhNvxS0euZ9JPbnb1ew
Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen is one of a handful of creative upstarts, like trumpeters Nils Petter Molvær or Erik Truffaz, who are embracing electronics and the improvisational side of jazz in their music. Henriksen's music is an otherworldly amalgamation of different and sometimes opposing elements, with imaginative soundscapes built on the tradition that trumpeter Miles Davisbegan with his electronic explorations of four decades ago. His releases as a leader began with the debut, Sakuteiki (Rune Grammofon, 2001), and also include Chiaroscuro (Rune Grammofon, 2004) and Strjon (Rune Grammofon, 2007), the three recent reissued on vinyl in the lavish, seven-LP Soldification (Rune Grammofon, 2013) box. Solidification also includes Chron, a new recording made exclusively for this box set. One of Henriksen's trademarks is his unorthodox approaches to music-making and improvisation, something most evident in the band Supersilent, an all-improv band which currently includes keyboardist Ståle Storløkken and producer/guitarist Helge Sten, with drummer Jarle Vespestad, leaving the group in 2009.
Supersilent's intelligent and uncompromising music is happening in the now. The band thrives on a "no rehearsals" motto, nor does it create fixed plans or strategies. Rather, the trio explores and convenes without a safety net, creating spontaneous improvisations that have included everything under the sun, from ambient textures to brutal and vicious noise. In 2010, at the renowned Punkt Festival in Kristiansand, Norway, the band was approached by legendary bassist/keyboardist ofLed Zeppelin fame, John Paul Jones—an initially non-performing guest of the festival who, having his bass and a laptop on-hand, asked the festival if he could perhaps open with a 15-minute improve for one of the existing acts. Placed in the opening slot to Supersilent's set, it was during soundcheck that he approached the Norwegian trio, asking if he could play with them, and they were more than happy to agree.
Jones' solo career, including production and collaborative projects, has long demonstrated his experimental and avant-garde interests, and following what turned out to be one of Punkt's highlights for that year, Supersilent and Jones reunited for a subsequent tour of England in 2012, which proved to be a perfect match for the challenge-seeking musicians.
Henriksen's sound can also be encountered on one of many projects he took part in, like British avant-songsmith David Sylvian's Nine Horses project, pianist Christian Wallumrød's Ensemble,Food, producers (and Punkt co-Artistic Directors) Jan Bang and Erik Honore's many projects, to name but a few.
A musician trying to redefine the sound of the trumpet—as well as other instruments in his arsenal, including electronics, voice and drums—make good music and have some fun.
All About Jazz: What was the impetus behind the formation of Supersilent?
Arve Henriksen:The beginning of the whole concept for Supersilent began in 1988 or 1989, when Jarle, the drummer, Storløkken, the keyboard player, and I met in Trondheim. We met while we were studying together, and we also met Helge. He was also studying in Trondheim, but he was studying at the art school. We knew each other during our studies at Trondheim, but we never got together to play. Then, in 1997, we met at the festival in Bergen, on the western coast of Norway. The jazz festival is called NattJazz and they invited us, our jazz band, which was a trio called Veslefrekk [Henriksen, Storløkken and Vespestad]. This trio met at the festival and at the same time Rune Kristoffersen, the founder of Rune Grammofon. He wanted us to be the first group to record for his label. The trio was a sort of free-improvised unit with all kinds of music styles on its repertoire.
Trumpeter Arve Henriksen is capable of some of the most ethereal and otherwordly sounds that are heard on the trumpet today. His discography numbers over 100, so many recordings of European jazz or improvised music are likely to feature his versatile and individualistic playing. On his most recent album as a leader, Cartogrophy (ECM, 2011), Henriksen’s playing ranges from shrill screeches to warm, vocal tones that don’t sound at all like a trumpet. Regardless of timbre, his playing is poised, intentional, and expressive.
There are some antecedents to Henriksen’s approach to trumpet playing. American jazz musicians Miles Davis and Chet Baker are obvious influences on his concept of tone, but a greater debt is owed to fellow Norwegian Nils Petter Molvaer, a trumpeter known for the soundscapes he constructs with elements of electronica and jazz.
Trumpeter Arve Henriksen talks about his collaboration with English National Ballet at the Bath Festival.
By Ivan Hewett
The jazz trumpet can take on many different sounds – obstreperous and virtuoso with Dizzy Gillespie, exquisitely tired with Miles Davis, defiant and cheerful with Armstrong. But, when it goes into Nordic regions, the jazz trumpet becomes strange indeed, evocative of vast frozen spaces and the Northern Lights. There’s now a whole school of Nordic trumpeters, and Norwegian Arve Henriksen is perhaps the best known of them. He makes an extraordinary breathy sound that has been likened to Balkan folk-singers and even to the sound of whalesong.
Next month, Henriksen’s otherwordly music will be heard in the unexpected surroundings of Bath Abbey, thanks to a bright idea of one of Henriksen’s British fans, the pianist Joanna MacGregor. She is director of the Bath International Festival, and this year has invited English National Ballet to create a new dance to music by Henriksen. He’ll be playing himself in the performance, but, as he admits, it will be a very different sort of experience to his usual gigs.
“Normally I play in improvised settings,” he says. “But here I’m working with the orchestra of the ballet company. A musician colleague of mine, Helge Sunde, has made an orchestral version of some music on my recent album, Cartography.” This is a surprise because, at first glance, Henriksen’s music seems singularly resistant to orchestral arrangement. His trumpet soars and swoops on a bed of strange electronic sounds, produced by Henriksen’s long-time collaborator Jan Bang.
“Making that album was a long process because Jan and I were often in different places working on different projects. He would create these wonderful sounds in the studio and then send them to me as sound files by email, and I would change something or add something, and send it back to him. It took two and a half years altogether.” Was it just the two of them or were there other musicians involved? “Oh, lots of people contributed something. Jan wanted to include Trio Medieval [a Norwegian all-female trio of singers who specialise in medieval music], but at the time he only had his Dictaphone with him, so he used that to record then mix it in. You can hear that on the album.”
It turns out that this isn’t Henriksen’s first encounter with dance. “Some years ago, I worked with a Norwegian dance company, and I was actually on stage with the dancers. It was scary but exciting to have these dancers actually touching me as they danced around. And, in fact, the choreographer got me to do some movements myself.”
This time things are different. English National Ballet principal dancer Dmitri Gruzdyev is putting the choreography together while Henriksen is working on a brand new project. But he’s not at all fazed by the idea of turning up and playing along to an interpretation of his music conceived by someone he hasn’t even met. “I enjoy it when people just react to my ideas. I really don’t want to guide them in any way, all I said was, 'Just pick what you want and go with the flow.’”
This easy-going attitude is bound up with Henriksen’s essentially communal view of creativity. “I always say two heads are better than one – that’s why my best things come out when I work with people like Jan. I think we should all be more willing to borrow from each other.” It’s a nice sentiment, but if everything on a musical recording is shared who gets the royalties? “Well, of course I understand if I mix some of Brian Eno’s music into my own, or if I add a trumpet line to one of Sting’s songs, I can’t release it! But I can certainly learn a lot. It’s a challenge to bring something different and maybe a little bit alien into your music, because then you have to think, 'How can I make a form out of this? How can I integrate all these things?’”
For Henriksen, combining his music with dance is the natural and logical next step in this process. “There’s a natural affinity between the art forms. You can express a musical scale of dynamics with the body, and in music you can have something like a dancer’s gesture. But what I really remember from my experience in dance is how similar the processes were of making dance and making music. You try things out, you weigh and balance different options.
“In art it’s always a matter of working out the consequences of a particular action. If I make a phrase that has a feeling of a question, then this creates a need for something that 'answers’ this phrase. Or, if you build tension you may need to release it. So I’m hoping that at this performance in Bath there will be this kind of instant creativity, where I see something in the dance that touches me and then respond to it.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/worldfolkandjazz/7771240/Arve-Henriksen-the-sound-of-movement.html
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