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Oddgeir Berg

Electroacoustic jazz with one leg in melancholy and the other in ecstasy

Jazz trios named after the piano player give certain expecations, be it Horace Silver and his tender "Que Pasa" or Esbjørn Svensson and his Northern sounds, clarity and intimacy are common to these, with a hint of tonal melancholy.

These characteristics also feature on "Before Dawn", the debut album from The Oddgeir Berg Trio, who are clearly familiar with a Scandinavian jazz tradition. Tunes such as "The Mermaid’s Dance" and "Springeren" summon images of bonfires by the sea lit to herald the summer solstice, and the inevitable turn of the season when Autumn arrives and buries its roots and turns with fine melodic lines into the silence of winter.

The trio has some other tricks up its sleeve though, most importantly an urgency for action, pace and adventure, best heard in "A.C.M" and "Slogro" with their rhythmic relocations and aggressive radiance. Here the Oslo based trio has more in common with Miles Davis’ Jack Johnson than Scandinavia’s Jan Johannson. The Jimi Hendrix rock sound of the doublebass and the propulsive drum sound energetically support Berg’s playing. Berg’s curiosity in experimenting with Wurlitzer\Rhodes and synthesizer sounds sneaks into the soundscape and lends a distinctive colour to the sound panorama.

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20
Live Review

Oddgeir Berg Trio At Scott's Jazz Club

Read "Oddgeir Berg Trio At Scott's Jazz Club" reviewed by Ian Patterson


Oddgeir Berg Trio Scott's Jazz Club jny:Belfast, N. Ireland January 19, 2024 A cold Friday night in January. Belts tightened after the festive season splurging. Just the day before, 150.000 thousand public sector workers had gone on 24-hour strike over low pay--the largest such action in Northern Ireland in a generation. Yet despite the biting economic realities for many people, it was business as usual at Scott's Jazz Club, with a packed house for ...

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Album Review

Oddgeir Berg Trio: While We Wait For A Brand New Day

Read "While We Wait For A Brand New Day" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan


Writing about Norway's Oddgier Berg trio and discussing the group's terrific debut album Before Dawn (Ozella Music, 2018), one reviewer said that Berg and his mates were “A group to keep an eye and both ears on." That writer was spot on. The trio followed up that auspicious first effort with In the End Of The Night (Ozella Music, 2019), maintaining the same atmospheric, often gloomy introspection, bringing the long, cold Scandinavian winter darkness to mind with deliberative ...

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Album Review

Oddgeir Berg Trio: Christmas Came Early

Read "Christmas Came Early" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan


The late Paul Bley (1932-2016) once said of his ECM Records release Open, To Love (1972), that the sound he created there was his attempt to prove he was the slowest pianist in the world. He was a man with a sense of humor, and his tongue had surely wormed its way into his cheek with that observation. And the mention of Bley in a review of an Oddgeir Berg Trio album comes about for a couple of reasons. One: ...

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Album Review

Oddgeir Berg Trio: In The End Of The Night

Read "In The End Of The Night" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan


Oddgeir Berg Trio, out of Norway, came in with a compelling and fully-formed voice from the very beginning, with a particularly fine debut, Before Dawn (Ozella Music, 2018). Headed by pianist Berg, the group has wasted no time in releasing their sophomore effort, In The End of the Night. There is something to be said for the art of being prolific, an album or two a year--something the current state of the music/recording business and diminishing CD sales seems to ...

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Radio & Podcasts

Coffee and Croissants with Oddgier Berg

Read "Coffee and Croissants with Oddgier Berg" reviewed by Nick Davies


In this episode, special guest pianist Oddgeir Berg talks about his trio's album Before Dawn [Ozella Music] and the strength and depth of the Finnish jazz scene. The playlist includes lots of new music from artists like Cloudmakers 5 through to Nat Birchall. Playlist Cloudmakers 5 “The Past Is Another Country" from Chinese Butterfly (Whirlwind) 2:07 Cody Carpenter “Face the Future" from Cody Carpenter's Interdependence (Blue Canoe Records) 12:37 Brenda Navarrete “Anana Oye" from Mi Munda (Alma ...

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Album Review

Oddgeir Berg: Before Dawn

Read "Before Dawn" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan


The evolution of the piano trio has taken us from Art Tatum to Erroll Garner to Oscar Peterson to Bud Powell to Bill Evans--with Thelonious Monk in there veering off from Ellington and the stride tradition on his own separate branch. The newest piano trio offshoot is that of groups who add electronic embellishments to their sounds, either live or sprinkled on via post recording spicings--the Swedish group the Esbjorn Svensson Trio (e.s.t.) is perhaps the highest profile example of ...

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