Solveig Slettahjell – Gullokk (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 42:53 minutes | 832 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Jazzland Recordings
Solveig Slettahjell has long had the idea of making a quartet album based on her selected “Nordic songbook” and has collected songs for this project over several years. As always, she delights in putting together material that doesn’t obviously belong together until it is brought together in her recognizable executive grip. In this eclectic collection we find Edvard Grieg’s “Ved Rondane”, Eva Dahlgren’s “Guldlock”, Alf Prøysen’s “Trassvisa hennes Tora”, songs by Allan Edwall, Orup and Anne Grethe Preus, interspersed with folk tunes and newly written material by Slettahjell himself and Andreas Ulvo .Together with his quartet consisting of some of the biggest musicians in Norwegian jazz at the moment; Andreas Ulvo on piano, Trygve Waldemar Fiske on bass and Pål Hausken on drums, she has tackled these songs with the same love and irreverence that characterize jazz’s handling of “the American songbook”. The whole thing has been marked by a kind of Scandinavian chamber jazz inspired by many who have gone before; Zetterlund, Johanson, Brockstedt, Rosseland, but with Slettahjell and the quartet’s clear ownership and own signature as the supporting element.
The album was recorded in Propeller studio – live on tape, as this band has become accustomed to, and is also mixed live with Mike Hartung and Kåre Christoffer Vestrheim, who produced the album together with Solveig with the whole quartet as co-producers.
The visuals around this album are based on Solveig’s own photographs from the pier on Malmøya where she lives. Throughout the pandemic, she has taken more than 600 photos of the same subject and has been fascinated by how expression and mood change with the light and weather, even though the pier is the same. The association of how the songs change with how they are sung and played is obvious.
Tracklist:
1. Solveig Slettahjell – Guldlock
2. Solveig Slettahjell – Trassvisa hennes Tora
3. Solveig Slettahjell – Den dag kjem aldri
4. Solveig Slettahjell – Småsko på brostein
5. Solveig Slettahjell – Vind över vindens ängar
6. Solveig Slettahjell – Ved Rondane
7. Solveig Slettahjell – Vaggvisa
8. Solveig Slettahjell – Från Djursholm till Danviks tull
9. Solveig Slettahjell – Alt jeg vet
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