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Lisa Ullen

A native of Seoul, Korea, Lisa Ullén grew up in the northern part of Sweden, and is based in Stockholm.

She is a graduate of the Royal Musical Academy in Stockholm, Sweden, where she studied classical piano in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Since the late 1990s, she has devoted herself entirely to improvised music, in the form of free jazz as well as avant garde and contemporary classical and experimental music. A versatile player with a singular musical vision, Ullén has repeatedly proven her ability to imprint her absolute sense for tonal texture on whatever musical context she appears in. Internationally recognized as a distinctive and uncompromising musician and composer, Ullén over the last decade has produced more than fifteen albums.

Ullén has collaborated extensively with many well-known Swedish artists and dancers, and has also scored several dramatic productions. She’s also performed and recorded music by contemporary composers .

In 2018 she released the triple album Piano Works and Ep Sekvenser och Lager on her own label Disorder.

In Oktober 2018 Lisa Ullén was awarded the Jazzcomposer of the Year-prize by the Swedish Radio

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3
Album Review

Lisa Ullén, Elsa Bergman, Anna Lund: Space

Read "Space" reviewed by John Sharpe


Although pianist Lisa Ullén, bassist Elsa Bergman and drummer Anna Lund supply a formidable bottom end to the surging horn polyphony of Anna Högberg's Attack, on Space they find an alternative means to convey emotion and rapport through collective improvisation. Across five studio tracks, the Swedish threesome practices an egalitarian creed which does not privilege any one instrument over another. It is not an unfamiliar setting. Ullén and Bergman featured in a co-operative which adopted a similar approach on Festen ...

14
Album Review

Anna Hogberg Attack: lena

Read "lena" reviewed by John Sharpe


It is a well known gambit to start an album with one of its strongest tracks. But it must have been a difficult choice for Swedish band leader and saxophonist Anna Högberg when programming her group Attack's second release. That she chose “Pappa Kom Hem," which opens with a sustained stentorian bellow from tenor saxophonist Elin Forkelid, leading to a cataclysmic free for all, announces that this is an uncompromising outfit. But the way the cut ends with the emergence ...

3
Album Review

Anna Högberg Attack: lena

Read "lena" reviewed by Samuel Stroup


There are moments of lena, the sophomore release from Swedish group Attack, which feel as though the ensemble is as much punk band as it is jazz sextet. Under the leadership of alto saxophonist Anna Högberg, the group plays loud and fast free jazz which is as stylish as it is raucous. Even the monochrome album art and absence of capitalized song titles reflect the album's mood, energetic and effortless. lena's six Högberg-penned tracks revisit the style of ...

14
Album Review

Lisa Ullen: Piano Works

Read "Piano Works" reviewed by Karl Ackermann


Lisa Ullén is best known for her work with Swiss bassist Nina de Heney, including Carve (2009), Look Right (2013)--both on LJ Records--and Quarrtsiluni (Lamour Records, 2016). Ullén was born in South Korea but raised in Sweden and graduated from the Royal Musical Academy in Stockholm where she studied classical piano. With well over a dozen recordings as a leader/co-leader, Ullén has long been an uncompromisingly dedicated artist whose penchant for newly invented, modern creative music has set her apart ...

9
Album Review

Lisa Ullén: Piano Works

Read "Piano Works" reviewed by John Sharpe


Pianist Lisa Ullén has followed her muse big time with Piano Works, a three-CD box-set of unaccompanied pieces, recorded in 2017. A native of South Korea, Ullén grew up and lives in Sweden, where most of her activity remains centered. She may be best known for her work on Anna Högberg's Attack (Omlott, 2016) and the collective foursome Festen (Clean Feed, 2016), but her discography goes back to 2006 with the first of several dates for her Quartet, which includes ...

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“Extraordinary is all I can say as I dive in to her unique approach. …Amazing piano, some of it prepared, which should appeals to fans of John Cage as well as of Cecil Taylor”. — Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery

Photos

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Space

Relative Pitch Records
2022

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lena

OMLOTT Records
2020

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Piano Works

Disorder
2018

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