<\/p>\n
A significant refinement of Wallumr\u00f8d\u2019s methods The celebrated Norwegian composer, pianist and bandleader follows his three previous Hubro releases (the solo \u2018Pianokammer\u2019, the duo LP Brutter, and a collaboration with Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, \u2018Untitled Arpeggios and Pulses\u2019) with a new album for his principal performing group, the Christian Wallumr\u00f8d Ensemble. As well as offering continuities with the past – earlier versions of the Ensemble recorded five well-received albums for the ECM label, from 2001 to 2012 – the performance of the seven original compositions on \u2018Kurzsam and Fulger’ represents a significant refinement of Wallumr\u00f8d\u2019s methods: a further stripping away of extraneous material to create a harder, leaner style that can be as close to pure sound as it is to music. While the composer\u2019s background in both jazz and church music, and his varied musical interests – from early polyphony to John Cage to techno – remain evident, there\u2019s a new, rigorously austere aesthetic where less really does mean more. The minimal instrumental resources that Wallumr\u00f8d employs, and his daring juxtaposition of sound with long beats of silence, nevertheless combine to produce music of great beauty, as if the limited means used had to be countered by a compensatory leap of imagination. And as anyone who has seen the Ensemble in performance will know, it really is a group, with the empathetic contributions of the individual members making them far more than mere interpreters of a pre-existing text. Indeed, the Ensemble itself is the text, each player combining to join the dots of the very faint line separating composition and improvisation. Eivind L\u00f8nning plays trumpet; Espen Reinertsen, saxophone; Tove T\u00f6rngren, cello and the virtuoso percussionist Per Oddvar Johansen, drums and vibraphone. Christian Wallumr\u00f8d plays piano and harmonium.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The celebrated Norwegian composer, pianist and bandleader follows his three previous Hubro releases (the solo \u2018Pianokammer\u2019, the duo LP Brutter, and a collaboration with Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, \u2018Untitled Arpeggios and Pulses\u2019) with a new album for his principal performing group, the Christian Wallumr\u00f8d Ensemble.<\/p>\n
Although this new, cut-down Ensemble is reduced to five members, the players\u2019 doubling and tripling of instruments and their variety of sound-making approaches (blowing, sucking, hitting, scraping, whatever\u2026) make it a kind of highly portable mini-orchestra, whose acoustic effects can mimic electronic processing with uncanny accuracy. And as anyone who has seen the Ensemble in performance will know, it really is a group, with the empathetic contributions of the individual members making them far more than mere interpreters of a pre-existing text. Indeed, the Ensemble itself is the text, each player combining to join the dots of the very faint line separating composition and improvisation. Eivind L\u00f8nning plays trumpet; Espen Reinertsen, saxophone; Tove T\u00f6rngren, cello and the virtuoso percussionist Per Oddvar Johansen, drums and vibraphone. Christian Wallumr\u00f8d plays piano and harmonium.<\/p>\n
While the compositions vary in duration from the two-minute miniatures of \u2018Fulgsam\u2019 and \u2018Klafferas\u2019 to the relatively epic \u2018Arpsam\u2019 (11\u201905\u201d), and stylistically from the giddily kinetic to the almost entirely static – everything is all of a piece: intensely meditative, intricately worked music designed to reward patient listening. The particular pleasures of the new Ensemble are captured in the opening track, the disconcertingly jaunty \u2018Haksong\u2019, a solo version of which also appears on \u2018Pianokammer\u2019. A clip-clopping, horse-drawn rhythm conjures up the vision of a rolling prairie landscape, the image accentuated by the half-heard sounds of what could be whoops and hollers. As if to undercut the catchy, almost pop-friendly, repetitions of the tune and the horn players\u2019 parping brass and reed harmonies, the music then devolves into a series of experimental glissandi, like the ending of the Beatles\u2019 \u2018A Day In The Life\u2019 re-scored for quintet. It\u2019s a lovely, brave and entirely successful touch, emblematic of Wallumr\u00f8d\u2019s command of different musical registers and the ability to synthesise them into a wholly personal, enduringly satisfying style.<\/p>\n
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The celebrated Norwegian composer, pianist and bandleader follows his three previous Hubro releases (the solo \u2018Pianokammer\u2019, the duo LP Brutter, and a collaboration with Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, \u2018Untitled Arpeggios and Pulses\u2019) with a new album for his principal performing group, the Christian Wallumr\u00f8d Ensemble.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":31678,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":[],"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[36],"product_tag":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-35249","1":"product","2":"type-product","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"product_cat-hubro","7":"product_shipping_class-cddvd-shipping","8":"uni_artist_tag-christian-wallumrod","9":"uni_artist_tag-christian-wallumrod-ensemble","10":"uni_artist_tag-eivind-lonning","11":"uni_artist_tag-espen-reinertsen","12":"uni_artist_tag-per-oddvar-johansen","13":"uni_artist_tag-tove-torngren","14":"uni_main_artist_tag-christian-wallumrod-ensemble","15":"uni_artist_genre-contemporary-music","16":"uni_artist_genre-instrumental","17":"uni_artist_genre-jazz","19":"first","20":"instock","21":"taxable","22":"shipping-taxable","23":"purchasable","24":"product-type-variable","25":"has-default-attributes"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/grappa.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product\/35249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/grappa.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/grappa.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/product"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grappa.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35249"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grappa.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/grappa.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"product_brand","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grappa.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_brand?post=35249"},{"taxonomy":"product_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grappa.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_cat?post=35249"},{"taxonomy":"product_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grappa.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_tag?post=35249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}