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Isabella Lundgren

I am sitting at a wooden table in the basement of the Scala theater in Stockholm. I am watching Isabella Lundgren from afar. Everywhere around us the party is swirling and swaying back and forth. Her party. An after party if you will, after her concert at the Stockholm Concert hall, which she sold out entirely on her own. Last time I was at the concert hall was when Patti Smith held a concert there after receiving the Polar Music Prize, it was not sold out. An hour ago Isabella held a somewhat sacred and rather magical concert with her own material, backed by a full classical orchestra. The seated audience applauded enthusiastically but politely. They were dressed up the way middle age people dress up for the theater. In Scala’s basement the mood in inverted. A wild band is blowing Dixie as underage girls spill Jack and Coke over their music-school-attending boyfriends and the in Sweden mandatory thick winter coats are trampled on the floor. In front of the stage the sweat is dripping down from the ceiling. It is crowded and rowdy and hot. Isabella has a smile on her face and her adopted Romanian street dog in her arms. She is standing a little to the side, watching the party with mild amusement. She is drinking a non alcoholic cider. Out of the sea of people Rigmor Gustafsson emerges to thank Isabella. The Swedish jazz queen Rigmor has stars in her eyes. She gives Isabella, what seems to be, at least from where I am sitting, an overwhelming review. As they are holding each others arms I think of a moment I have only read about. When Johnny Cash made his way over to Bob Dylan after a concert in the late sixties, to give to him his finest acoustic guitar. I think of that and I think of this. An equivalent of that moment. A passing of the torch if you will. There it is, torch passed. They even hail from the same town.

I first heard Isabella Lundgren sing in a music high school practice room in that town. Karlstad in rural Sweden. As I recall her voice then it sounded just like it does now. And I think she was only fifteen years old at the time. She already had that voice. An old voice. With a tear in it. A voice that had seen the bottom of the glass and the top of the world.

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Isabella Lundgren: Looking For The Silver Lining

Read "Isabella Lundgren: Looking For The Silver Lining" reviewed by William H. Snyder


Isabella Lundgren was born on the winter solstice of 1987. Each day after her birth the sun shone longer until summer came. Kind of how one feels listening to her latest album Look for the Silver Lining (Ladybird, 2021). One of Sweden's gifts to the music scene, she's a young woman with a heart and soul for the ages. My interview with her was conducted using James Lipton's Inside the Actor's Studio as a guideline in a 60-minute Zoom call. ...

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Album Review

Jazzagenturen: The Stockholm Corona Sessions Volume One

Read "The Stockholm Corona Sessions Volume One" reviewed by Jim Worsley


The Swedish jazz collective Jazzagenturen, founded by Pontus de Wolfe, reached deep into its collective soul and stood up to the downsides of the Covid-19 coronavirus early on. This large ensemble entered a studio on April 2nd. Twelve hours later they emerged having recorded fifty songs. The Stockholm Corona Sessions are being released in five volumes, spread out through 2020. Gathering worldwide attention due to being both an unprecedented project and superb multi-ranged jazz recordings, Jazzagenturen was not seeking this ...

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Live Review

Isabella Lundgren at Bullret Jazz Club

Read "Isabella Lundgren at Bullret Jazz Club" reviewed by Patrick Burnette


Isabella Lundgren with the Carle Bagge Trio Bullret Jazz Club Malmo, Sweden November 20, 2017 From time to time the “Bullret Jazz Club" uses the “Kuben" space at Malmo Live to host performances. On November 20, 2017, it was jazz singer Isabella Lundgren's turn to appear. Accompanied by the Carle Bagge Trio, she presented an intense ninety-minute set. Some publicity materials stress Lundgren's affinity with Billie Holiday, but don't attend a performance expecting ...

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“Isabella Lundgren has a seriousness and a gravity that is unique. Its like she makes time stand still just by being, I guess thats what they call charisma and presence. And then she sings absolutely fantastic, with a natural, flowing time and a low-key but expressive phrasing. The fact the she has something to say with her lyrics, also adds to the magic. She is one of the greatest things that has ever happened to the Swedish Jazz scene”. —Dan Backman, Swedish Daily News

”Lundgren’s incisive and agile voice, often reminiscent of Anita O’Day and Billie Holiday, came from a formally attired, deceptively slight frame and it thus was less of a surprise than it might have been to discover later that having studied music at New York’s New School she is now in Stockholm studying to be a priest. She had the congregation in her hand right from the lightly accompanied rubato intro to That Old Black Magic that opened the set. There was also It’s Magic and a couple of blues, all delivered with compelling authority and a mischievous sense of swing.” —Mark Gilbert, JazzJournal

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