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Jon Rune Strøm
Steve Swell: Dances With Questions
by John Sharpe
American trombonist Steve Swell plays to the strengths of his talented cast of improvisers on the sprawling multifaceted Dances With Questions, a three-CD box set which documents his three day residency at the 2019 Krakow Jazz Autumn. The center piece is the 70-minute title cut for a dozen musicians, but the album also includes two discs of small group encounters captured in the city's legendary Alchemia club during the previous evenings. Swell, a veteran of the New York ...
read moreAndre Roligheten: Marbles
by Chris May
Tenor saxophonist André Roligheten is best known outside his native Norway, and wider Scandinavia, as a member of drummer Gard Nilssen's Acoustic Unity and as a composer/arranger in the berserker big band, Supersonic Orchestra. Nilssen returns the favour on Marbles, one of Roligheten's infrequent own-name releases. The album has grown out of a band Roligheten put together in spring 2021 for the Trondheim Jazz Festival, which had commissioned a new piece from him. The band was called ...
read moreRodrigo Amado Northern Liberties: We Are Electric
by John Sharpe
Portuguese saxophonist Rodrigo Amado hits the jackpot with the debut by his Northern Liberties quartet. He's found gifted collaborators in the Norwegian threesome of trumpeter Thomas Johansson, drummer Gard Nilssen and bassist Jon Rune Strøm. Amado's preferred domain is muscular free jazz. It's territory he's thoroughly explored with his Motion Trio, supplemented by guests like trumpeter Peter Evans and pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach, and with his This Is Our Language band with Joe McPhee. While the Scandinavian ...
read moreRodrigo Amado Northern Liberties: We Are Electric
by Mark Corroto
The predicament with modern albums is that an album is often more than just one album. With the advent of streaming music, and compact discs before it, music expands beyond the unit we traditionally designated as side one or side two of an LP. A perfect example of this concept is We Are Electric by the Portuguese-Norwegian collaboration Rodrigo Amado Northern Liberties. Three of the four tracks here could easily be considered a freestanding LP side and, if that were ...
read moreRodrigo Amado Northern Liberties: We Are Electric
by Troy Dostert
By all accounts, 2021 was a very good year for Rodrigo Amado. One of the leading lights of the Portuguese avant-garde, the indefatigable tenor saxophonist first released The Field (NoBusiness), featuring his Motion Trio (with cellist Miguel Mira and drummer Gabriel Ferrandini) alongside guest pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach, and Let the Free Be Men (Trost), with his now-frequent collaborators saxophonist Joe McPhee, bassist Kent Kessler and drummer Chris Corsano. But if these two albums come to overshadow We Are Electric, ...
read moreFriends & Neighbors: The Earth Is #
by Mark Corroto
The importance of choosing a name for your jazz band is often underestimated. Take the quintet Friends & Family for instance. When it was formed in 2008, it wasn't dubbed the André Roligheten Quintet or the Oscar Grönberg Band. No. From its beginnings, the quintet shared composing duties among its members as well as dutiful deference to each musician's sound. Proof of this friendship among neighbors (all live in Norway) is a string of excellent releases. The Earth Is # ...
read moreJon Rune Strøm Quintet: Fragments
by John Sharpe
Norwegian bassist Jon Rune Strøm, subscribes to none of the self-effacement which sometimes manifests itself on dates led by rhythm section mainstays. That is signaled straight away on the first cut of Fragments, where no other instrument is heard for the first six minutes. With bow in hand, he initially duets with fellow bassist Christian Meaas Svendsen, first mining the upper registers but then pursuing diverging seams. Then Strøm alone carves out a robust pizzicato solo which culminates in a ...
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