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Marja Mortensson
Daniel Herskedal: A Single Sunbeam
by Geno Thackara
What Del Close did for the art of improv comedy or Jacques Torres for the art of chocolate, Daniel Herskedal does for the tuba. An occasional star such as Bob Stewart has taken the instrument somewhere fresh outside the time-honored contexts of orchestra or marching band, but it is another thing to make the entire tradition feel new--good luck trying to name anyone else who could adapt the tuba to chill-ambient, Arabian travelogue and Norwegian yoik chanting with equal skill. ...
read moreMarja Mortensson & Daniel Herskedal: Lååje – Dawn
by Ian Patterson
For her Norwegian Grammy-winning album Mojhtestasse (Vuelie, 2018), South Saami singer Marja Mortensson recruited tuba player Daniel Herskedal and drummer/percussionist Jakop Janssønn on a sublime offering of nature-inspired folk songs. On Lååje—Dawn , Mortensson and Herskedal reunite for their first duo outing, once again finding their muse in Norway's nature. But the seasonal invocations in Mortensson's poetic lyrics are tempered by ecological warnings. Dawn represents renewal and hope, but as Mortensson and climatologists the world over know, Earth is at ...
read moreMarja Mortensson: Mojhtestasse
by Ian Patterson
The passing on of musical tradition is fundamental to any culture, but so too is innovation, which breathes new life into old ways. Mojhtestasse, the second album by Norwegian south Saami singer Marja Mortensson, continues her revival of the yoik tradition--a unique, chant-like vocalisation--that has been dormant in her family for several generations. Mortensson's wordless chant-cum-improvisations exert a charm-like spell, but just as fascinating are her self-penned songs, sung in south Saami, which with just five hundred native speakers, is ...
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