Bill Frisell, Brian Blade & Sam Yahel * May 2005
* Jazz Alley, Seattle, WA
07/Dec/2009 |
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Charlie Hunter * 6.1.09 * KPLU FM
20/Feb/2009 |
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"Guitarist Charlie Hunter appeals to a lot of music fans on a lot of different levels. His amazing technique and improvisational skills have earned praise from straight-ahead jazz critics and fans. His willingness to experiment musically is looked upon with great favor by devotees of the avant-garde. And his ability to dig into a big, nasty groove and then run away with it has made him a favorite with jam-band audiences.
No matter what sort of music he plays, his amazing technique has been Hunter's calling card since he started recording in the mid-1990s. Armed with a seven-string guitar, he possesses the unique ability to sound like at least two guitarists at once, as he seems to play bass lines, melody lines, chords and improvisational passages at the same time.
However, as he tells KPLU's Nick Francis in this session, he feels that he's taken technique as far as he can. Hunter jokes that, at a certain point in the recent past, he felt that the only thing he could do to outdo himself on stage would be to set himself on fire. Since he was understandably hesitant to take such a drastic step, he began to re-think the music he was playing and the reasons he wanted to play music in the first place.
His conclusion, as you'll hear, was that he'd spent enough of his career in the service of technique — and that it was now time to serve the music. The solo guitar pieces he plays in this interview clearly demonstrate the fruits of Hunter's new path."
--88.5 KPLU FM
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Esbjorn Svenson Trio * 12.01.07 * Gamla Theatern,
Sweden
21/Jun/2008 |
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Esbjörn
Svensson, R.I.P.
Swedish jazz pianist and band leader whose exciting and unconventional performances won an international following
Esbjörn Svensson, who died on Saturday aged 44 in a scuba-diving accident near Stockholm, was a pianist and leader of the innovative Esbjörn Svensson Trio, popularly known as EST.
The trio, founded in the early 1990s, played an unclassifiable brand of music which incorporated avant-garde jazz, contemporary rock and elements of modern classical music in constantly varying proportions.
Its live performances, in particular, were exciting, unpredictable and hugely popular with young audiences. The trio's fame was still growing strongly at the time of Svensson's death.
To download MP3 version, option/right-click on the "Listen Now" icon.
To download superior AAC version with chapters & artwork, subscribe to P'Cafe feed via sidebar links!
Feedback: djfundi@podcastcafe.org
Swedish jazz pianist and band leader whose exciting and unconventional performances won an international following
Esbjörn Svensson: his music was described as a 'fusion of American post-bop, synthesised abstractions and Nordic cool'
Esbjörn Svensson, who died on Saturday aged 44 in a scuba-diving accident near Stockholm, was a pianist and leader of the innovative Esbjörn Svensson Trio, popularly known as EST.
The trio, founded in the early 1990s, played an unclassifiable brand of music which incorporated avant-garde jazz, contemporary rock and elements of modern classical music in constantly varying proportions.
Its live performances, in particular, were exciting, unpredictable and hugely popular with young audiences. The trio's fame was still growing strongly at the time of Svensson's death.
To download MP3 version, option/right-click on the "Listen Now" icon.
To download superior AAC version with chapters & artwork, subscribe to P'Cafe feed via sidebar links!
Feedback: djfundi@podcastcafe.org
Esbjörn Svensson was born on April 16 1964 at Västeras, Sweden. His mother was a classical pianist and his father a keen jazz enthusiast, and the boy grew up with an equal love for both genres, as well as for rock.
He took up the piano "because we didn't have any other instrument in the house", although he would have preferred the drums. Quite soon he met another schoolboy, Magnus Oström, who did have some drums and they began playing together: "We had no idea how to play, but it was a lot of fun ... No one was telling us how to play." Oström was to become the drummer with EST.
At 16 Svensson gained a place at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, going on later to study Music at Stockholm University. During this time he played in a number of small jazz combos in Sweden and Denmark before finding work in the recording studios.
In 1990 Svensson and Oström met up again and set about forming their own band. When, a year or so later, they found the bassist Dan Berglund the trio was complete. Their first album, When Everyone Has Gone (1993), scored an instant hit in Scandinavia, with Svensson being nominated as Swedish Jazz Musician of the Year.
Since at least the end of the Second World War jazz has held a small but serious place among the performing arts in the Nordic countries. In recent years, as European jazz gradually separated itself from direct American influence, a distinctive Scandinavian voice emerged.
At first somewhat icy in tone, this evolved into a mixture of styles, all sharing the same fondness for open-ended structures.
In the case of EST, the element which first caught the attention of listeners in the wider world was the trio's rejection of the conventional roles of the three instruments. Traditionally, the piano takes the leading part, with support and occasional solo excursions coming from the bass and drums.
But in EST, Svensson, Oström and Berglund played with equal strength. They were able to strike an equilibrium because they knew each other so well and concentrated so hard on the overall effect. They introduced electronics into the mixture to produce what one American critic described as a "fusion of American post-bop, synthesised abstractions and Nordic cool".
EST began making in impression on the American audience with the albums Good Morning Suzie Soho (2000) and A Strange Place For Snow (2002), the latter released to coincide with their first tour of the United States. They were now performing in the kinds of venues more usually associated with mainstream rock and pop music.
Although they were not particularly demonstrative on stage, the drama, tension and sheer extravagance of invention brought audiences of several thousand to their feet. At times Svensson even had the crowds singing along to quite complicated pieces of melody.
The albums Seven Days Of Falling (2003), Viaticum (2005) and Tuesday Wonderland (2006) achieved the rare distinction of being listed in both the pop and jazz charts. In May 2006 the trio became the first European jazz group to be featured on the cover of Down Beat, America's oldest and most prestigious jazz magazine.
EST's 11th and final album, a live recording from a 2006 concert in Hamburg, was released late last year. They were currently working on its successor.
Esbjörn Svensson is survived by his wife and two sons.
--from The Guardian, 6.21.08