Ketil Björnstad

Commissioned by the Molde International Jazz Festival and recorded live at the Norwegian festival in 2010, “La notte” is a salute to Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni, whom Ketil Bjørnstad counts amongst his formative influences. “At the same time that I discovered what jazz could be, after listening to Miles Davis’ In A Silent Way, I also saw the films by Godard, Bresson and Antonioni. Perhaps it was the slow, rhythmic authority in the films by Michelangelo Antonioni that made me think of music… As long as visual art creates music in our minds, and music creates pictures and visual expressions with the same intensity, the two are deeply and profoundly interdependent”. This album, then, can be considered “the soundtrack to an inner film”, in which Antonioni’s images and atmospheres are translated and transformed through personal moods and memories.

The inside booklet for Norwegian pianist and composer Ketil Bjørnstad's Seafarer's Song begins with a small statement by the Spanish author Juan Jose Millas about the plight of the truly shipwrecked, the ruined in our postmodern times, where messages of distress don't come in bottles, but inside the real human bodies of refugees. It speaks volumes about the music included here. Bjørnstad has given us yet another album of the water to be sure, something he has done since the inception of his solo career for ECM, but he has done so in a completely different way. There is no jazz on the Seafarer's Song, and yes; that's a plus. Utilizing his long-standing band which includes trumpeter Nils Petter Molvaer, guitarist Eivind Aarset, drummer Per Lindvall, bassist Bjorn Kjellemyr, and cellist Svante Henryson, Bjørnstad ups the ante by employing the brilliant if unconventional vocalist Kristin Asbjornsen…

Pianist Ketil Bjornstad's music is typically in the Scandinavian division of ECM tradition - cool, seamless, flowing, emotionally consistent. This series of eleven selections titled by Roman numerals progresses through a life cycle that reaches a nebulous pinnacle. With no bass player, tenor saxophonist Tore Brunborg and the always inventive drummer Jon Christensen - all veterans of Euro-classical-textured jazz - weave through various aspects of contemporary jazz while mindful of natural and spiritual elements. In Bjornstad's playing, you circular notions of former ECM stablemate, pianist Mike Nock, peace-based hymnal and traditional themes, a waltz, a short stack of mystery, and just a smattering of the blues…

Nightwalker is a suite inspired by Ketil Bjornstads own experiences as a 'nightwalker' …in nature, in the streets of Oslo or in a musical landscape.