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Very few Norwegian jazz musicians have been working with the unique Norwegian vocal- and instrumental folk music for so many years, developing this music into something new. Tenor saxophonist and goat-horn player Karl Seglem is a pioneer creating new musical landscapes from up north. His earlier and diverted CD-releases are all remarkable. His latest album "Urbs" (2007), did receive outstanding reviews from music-journalists world wide. Karl Seglems world-jazz sounds refreshing. Exciting soundscapes that eliminate boundaries between musical genres. With this new album called "norskjazz no", he takes a step back, searching for a "cleaner" musical approach, and diving deeper into both the "classic" jazz traditions and the jazz-sound from his tenor saxophone. This is some of his thoughts about the new recording: "The time was ripe. Both for creating something authentic in a different format, and for collaborating with young, new, and different musicians. For a long time, maybe even since I began my career as a freelance-musician in 1985, I had been inspired by a dream of recording an acoustic album with a quartet. At that time I worked mainly within the North American jazz tradition, in both big band settings and with smaller ensembles, and took productive lessons with saxophonists Dale, Riisnes and Indreberg. Both the form and the content of the North American tradition were confining and "foreign" to me. A totally new landscape opened up for me when I realised that it was possible to delve into the traditions of my own country and explore our own sounds and rhythms. I discovered that improvisation based on Norwegian sources was possible, and even liberating. This opened up a whole new world of possibilities for me. It takes a long time to gain acceptance for new idioms that are built on the sounds of previous generations. Several Norwegian musicians have been in the forefront of these developments, also internationally, and have created new approaches to improvisation: jazz where melody, harmony, improvisation, rhythm, and structure are based on other roots and other traditions than those of North America.
My dream of recording an acoustic album has matured through performing, composing, and releasing CDs. In this recording my main goal is to hear for myself whether the music that I have created through my exploration of Norwegian folk music can function in the format that is, perhaps, the one most closely associated with jazz from a historical perspective: the quartet. Journalist Terje Mosnes has said that he defines Norwegian jazz as the music that is being played by Norwegian jazz musicians at any giventime – with their multitude of distinctive voices. I have always considered myself to be a jazz musician in the sense that I can improvise. I have never felt that it was important to put a label on my music. But since it is the case that many people want their music placed neatly in a category before they listen to it, I have decided to simplify matters for everyone by calling this album “norskjazz no”(Norwegian jazz now). My most important parameter throughout these years as a musician and composer has been, and remains: sound (KLANG!). My approach to playing, creating and improvising is mainly klang: sound-based. This is also the focal point of the album "norskjazz no". Karl Seglem, February 2009 |