Ida Sand

The debut release of a Scandinavian singer has seldom been as surprising as that of the Swedish vocalist Ida Sand two years ago with her album Meet Me Around Midnight (ACT 9716-2). It simply didn’t sound at all like a typical Scandinavian record. What the critics and the public heard was, “the most soulful white female singer to come along in some time” – earthy, tart, deep black, and authentically bound to gospel and blues. Beside this, another basic difference to a lot of other singers is that Ida Sand plays piano, and her singing and piano playing go hand in hand.

Like jazz, soul has undergone an evolution from an American-based music rooted in the blues into a form of expression that now finds itself at home anywhere in the world. This global reach of the music is visible in ACT’s artist roster where we find, among others, Nils Landgren, Knut Reiersrud, Solveig Slettahjell, Magnus Lindgren, Torsten Goods, and - above all - the Swedish singer/pianist Ida Sand. Her four previous albums have channelled jazz, pop and folk influences, but "My Soul Kitchen" is different. It is Ida Sand's clearest declaration yet of her love of "sweet soul music", and is also a demonstration of her deep affinity for it. There are songs by soul greats such as Al Green, Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles and The Meters, which are completely at one with both Ida Sand's own tunes and with her soulful interpretations of the music of artists like John Fogerty and Mike Shapiro. As Ida Sand herself says: "Soul music is such a broad genre. There’s funky soul, blue-eyed soul, neo-soul, RnB, New Orleans soul, Motown-soul and many others. This album is a blend of many of these.”

In 2020, the authorities in Sweden tried to keep normal life going for as long as possible, but, even there, things were eventually brought to a halt by Corona. And like everywhere else, musicians were among the hardest-hit. "It felt somehow as if one of my limbs had been severed,” recalls Ida Sand.

29-year-old singer and pianist Ida Sand didn't feel rushed to start a solo career: Born into a musical family – her father was an opera singer, her mother a church musician – she studied music in Stockholm and then worked with a large number of Swedish musicians, honing her skills. One of these musicians was Nils Landgren, who gave Sand ample opportunity to show her talent on the latest release of his Funk Unit, Licence to Funk, and now that she has finally recorded an album under her own name, Landgren is on board as a producer and also guests on a number of songs.