Langeland

The celebration of YULE in Northern Europe harks back to a transition from ancient Pagan Germanic culture to the more formal spirituality of the newer Christian rite. Christmas, as we mostly now call it, gave us hymns, processions and chants, and in between, silence in church. Yule meant a vibrant pre-Christian secularity, with feasting and dancing, the noise of instruments and decorating the house with holly, ivy and mistletoe as a tribute to the gods of earth and air. Much of the music on this album dates from an earlier time when in a throwback to Yule churches were decorated with Christmas greenery, and at home there would be carols sung round a burning Yule log, the two traditions side by side. But the songs on this album are contemporary performances, a matrix where acappella voices meet improvising instruments in a synthesis of secular and sacred.

The celebration of YULE in Northern Europe harks back to a transition from ancient Pagan Germanic culture to the more formal spirituality of the newer Christian rite. Christmas, as we mostly now call it, gave us hymns, processions and chants, and in between, silence in church. Yule meant a vibrant pre-Christian secularity, with feasting and dancing, the noise of instruments and decorating the house with holly, ivy and mistletoe as a tribute to the gods of earth and air. Much of the music on this album dates from an earlier time when in a throwback to Yule churches were decorated with Christmas greenery, and at home there would be carols sung round a burning Yule log, the two traditions side by side. But the songs on this album are contemporary performances, a matrix where acappella voices meet improvising instruments in a synthesis of secular and sacred.

Deirdre Langeland's Meltdown explores for middle grade readers the harrowing story of the deadly earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown that caused the 2011 Fukushima power plant disaster.

Musical messages from Oslo, New York, Basel and Lugano – recorded between 2018 and 2022 - are juxtaposed and recombined on an absorbing recording that features Norwegian drummer Thomas Strønen solo and in a series of duets . With such partners as Craig Taborn, Chris Potter, Sinikka Langeland and Jorge Rossy, the musical frame of reference is very broad. Elements from Langeland’s’s archaic-sounding folk to Potter’s post-Coltrane saxophone and Taborn’s whirlwind modernist piano each find their place in a project that implies new threads of connectivity, new creative relationships. The album was completed and mixed by Strønen and producer Manfred Eicher at Bavaria Musikstudios in Munich in February 2023.

Norwegian drummer Thomas Strønen built Relations during COVID by emailing rhythm tracks to musicians around the world. The key to the project's success came from ECM founder Manfred Eicher, who suggested that Strønen only invite artists that he had never worked with before.

Musical messages from Oslo, New York, Basel and Lugano – recorded between 2018 and 2022 - are juxtaposed and recombined on an absorbing recording that features Norwegian drummer Thomas Strønen solo and in a series of duets . With such partners as Craig Taborn, Chris Potter, Sinikka Langeland and Jorge Rossy, the musical frame of reference is very broad. Elements from Langeland’s’s archaic-sounding folk to Potter’s post-Coltrane saxophone and Taborn’s whirlwind modernist piano each find their place in a project that implies new threads of connectivity, new creative relationships. The album was completed and mixed by Strønen and producer Manfred Eicher at Bavaria Musikstudios in Munich in February 2023.