Svenska Kaputt - Suomi (2015)

Svenska Kaputt - Suomi (Moserobie, 2015)

Personnel:
Jonas Kullhammar: saxophones
Reine Fiske: guitar
Torbjörn Zetterberg: bass
Jonas Holmegard: drums

Tracklisting:
01 - Mellantillstånd

02 - Paroni 

03 - Nötskalsmusik #1 

04 - Veesaltonen 

05 - Gårdagens Visa\Keijsaren

A brilliant musical project from the Moserobie jazz underground of Sweden – one that brings together four completely wonderful players, but in ways that are very different than most of their work in other settings! The sound here is very open and spacious – not in a mellow way, or an ECM mode – but instead this really introspective approach to the properties of the musicians' individual instruments – almost as if they're using this project as a way to thoughtfully explore things from different sonic angles, sometimes with a surprisingly sensitive vibe. Yet there's also some nice currents of darkness in the music – things are definitely never too sweet – and surprises include some piano from both Jonas Kullhammar and Torbjorn Zetterberg – alongside Zetterberg's more familiar bass (both electric and acoustic), and Kullhamar's music on tenor, flute, baritone, and oboe. Guitarist Reine Fiske also plays piano on one track – and guitar on the others – and the group also features drums from Johan Holmegard. [Dusty Groove]

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Torbjörn Zetterberg - Och den stora frågan om liv och död (2015)

Torbjörn Zetterberg - Och den stora frågan om liv och död (Moserobie, 2015)

Personnel:
Torbjörn Zetterberg: double bass
Susana Santos Silva: trumpet
Mats Äleklint: trombone
Jonas Kullhammar: tenor sax, flute & braithophone
Alberto Pinton: baritone sax, flute & alto flute
Jon Fält: drums
Everybody: percussion

Tracklisting:
01 - Knut Utan Slut
02 - Vad Är Inte En Metafor
03 - Säkra Tvivel
04 - Saker Överallt
05 - Kontorsmusik
06 - Vad Är Det Som Dör
07 - Innan och Efter 

08 - Springa Runt I Hjul

Over much of the past decade, Swedish bassist Torbjörn Zetterberg has pulled me into his world time and time again. He ostensibly works within jazz, but that category feels inadequate to his creative curiosity and artistic empathy. He's a strong player, but to my ears his writing, arranging, and concepts are even more formidable than his instrumental skills. He recently released two albums whose radically different approaches suggest his range. 

Om Liv & Död (Moserobie), the second record from his working band Den Stora Frågan, alternates between brawny solo bass vignettes and moody, often turbulent sextet arrangements, both of which evoke the visceral, emotive work of Charles Mingus without sounding like it. Zetterberg's killer band—reedists Jonas Kullhammar and Alberto Pinton, drummer Jon Fält, trombonist Mats Äleklint, and Portuguese trumpeter Susana Santos Silva—brings an appealing looseness to the arrangements, giving the pieces an impressive lived-in feel with strong rapport and interplay. "Vad Är Inte En Metafor" is a slab of hovering tension, with Zetterberg providing hydroplaning arco lines over which the front-line soloists make unhurried, probing excursions; meanwhile the rest of the group drops airy jabs and feints, both composed and improvised. The short, stop-start pulsing riff in the hard-driving "Säker Tvivel" halts for terse solo statements, then finally opens up with a longer improvised section that features scampering, clattering interactions between Zetterberg and Fält, soon joined by a wonderful gutbucket statement by Äleklint, one of Europe's best and most overlooked trombonists. 

The brief  "Kontorsmusik" sounds like it was recorded an echoing church, with Pinton and Kullhammar's flutes distant from the mikes for a wonderfully spooky vibe. The album concludes with the brooding "Springa Runt I Hjul", whose dark, fluttering horn utterances alternately cascade down and circle the bassist's throbbing bowed dirge. Below you can check out the ruddy, propulsive full-band track "Innan och Efter," which has a melodic sensibility that borrows a bit from Albert Ayler—though Pinton's baritone saxophone sounds more Big Jay McNeely or a bulldozer.

Zetterberg investigates much different terrain on If Nothing Else (Clean Feed), an all-improvised trio effort with Silva and French organist Hampus Lindwall, who's more an experimental musician than a jazz player; he's also the longtime organist at Parisian church Saint-Esprit, where the album was recorded. The music brings to mind wide-open spaces, with Lindwall producing haunting long tones and Silva blowing parched lines and sour blurts; it's all blunted by the acoustics of the space, which give everything a wonderfully washed-out feel, as though the music is arriving from outdoors, or wending its way through a ravine. From track to track the trio appears to takes advantage of varying microphone placement, which not only alters where each instrument is placed in the mix but also the timbral quality of each. On "Atonality," for example, Silva blows her Harmon-muted lines directly into the mike, while Zetterberg's arco surges sneakily around beneath the brass and the tension-loaded organ drones. "Cinematic" is an overused word in music criticism, but these pieces definitely convey a delicious suspense and romantic languor. Below you can hear one of the album's most turbulent pieces, "Stop Chords." [Chicago Reader]

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Gilbert Holmström New Quintet - Tiden Är Kort (2013)

Gilbert Holmström New Quintet - Tiden Är Kort (Moserobie, 2013)

Personnel:
Gilbert Holmström: tenor saxophone
Jonas Kullhammar: stritch, tenor, baritone & bass saxophone
Magnus Broo: trumpet
Torbjörn Zetterberg: double bass
Jonas Holgersson: drums

Tracklisting:
01 - 1976
02 - Osaka
03 - Desert Walk
04 - Libero
05 - Stars Fading Blue
06 - Dog Fight
07 - Indian Chant
08 - Tiden Är Kort

Holmström, now 77 years old, is part of the Nordic jazz legacy in its various incarnations. A Charlie Parker concert at Gothenburg's Concert Hall in 1950 left a lasting impression on him and convinced him to choose a musical career over dentistry. Gilbert Holmström led his own quintet in the sixties inspired by the American free jazz of Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler and Archie Shepp, and in the seventies his quintet— now called Mount Everest—alternated between fusion and expressive, acoustic jazz, later spiced with Latin elements. Since the mid- eighties his musical activities focused around the Jazzgalleriet in Gothenburg, his hometown, where exhibitions and concerts were organized.

Moserbie—Kullhammar's label—reissued in 2011 the classic album of Holmström quintet from 1965, Utan Misstankar (Without Suspicion), still considered one of the best Swedish jazz albums of all times. Recording Tiden Är Kort (Time is short) with a new quintet is a natural conclusion of the successful reissue. Holmstrom wrote all the compositions except the title piece, taken from the old Christian song.

Holmstrom is backed by Kullhammar and Kullhammar Quartet rhythm section—double bassist Torbjorn Zetterberg and drummer Jonas Holgersson plus the brilliant trumpeter Magnus Broo, a member of the Swedish- Norwegian quintet Atomic. This quintet enjoys supporting the articulate and commanding solos of Holmström, gently repeating and expanding his musical ideas almost like a choir, all locked in light swinging pulse. The emotional ballads "Osaka" and "Stars fading blue" highlight Holmstrom's soft and velvety tenor voice while "Desert Walk" and "Indian chant" emphasizes the tight and supportive interplay with Kullhammar and Broo, all three soaring above the hypnotic, propulsive rhythms laid by Zetterberg and Holgersson. The smoking, be-bop "Dog fight" offers Holmström opportunity to trade fast, muscular solos with Kullhammar and Broo. This heartfelt tribute to a great musical figure is concluded with a soulful ballad that injects a soft swinging pulse to an ancient hymn. [Allaboutjazz]

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Torbjörn Zetterberg - Och Den Stora Frågan (2014)

Torbjörn Zetterberg - Och Den Stora Frågan (Moserobie, 2014)

Personnel:
Torbjörn Zetterberg: double bass, percussion
Susana Santos Silva: trumpet, flugelhorn, percussion;
Mats Äleklint: trombone, percussion;
Jonas Kullhammar: tenor & baritone saxophones, clarinet, flute, percussion;
Alberto Pinton: baritone saxophone, clarinet, flute, piccolo flute, percussion;
Jon Fält: drums, percussion

Tracklisting:
01 - En Bra Start På Dagen
02 - Världen Är Sig Aldrig Lik
03 - Mästare av Vad

04 - Ingen Tid Till Ingenting
05 - DO-DODO-DO-DO-DO
06 - Hyllning Till Ovissheten
07 - 1+1=1
08 - Visa Från Mitten av Universum

Swedish double bassist Torbjorn Zetterberg did not record as a bandleader for more than seven years. Zetterberg, a member of the Jonas Kullhammar Quartet and a prominent figure in Nordic jazz since the late nineties, experienced an existential crisis at the peak of his busy, successful career. He felt bored and unsatisfied, so in 2010 he decided to leave city life and moved to a Buddhist temple without his instrument. He stayed at the temple for a year and still spends half of his time there.

Och Den Stora Fragan ("And the Big Question" in Swedish) is a welcome return. Zetterberg employs musicians who played with him before, most of them on his last album as a bandleader, Skildrar Kvinnans Kamp (Moserobie, 2008). He adds Portuguese trumpeter Susana Santos Silva, who collaborated with him on a set of impressive improvised dialogues, Almost Tomorrow (Clean Feed, 2013) and drummer Jon Falt, a member of pianist Bobo Stenson's trio.

Zetterberg states that he now feels more and more that he actually lives his dream, as he should have since the beginning of his career. Indeed Och Den Stora Fragan is charged with joyful urgency, shiny optimism and confident flowing energy, despite the doubts and uncertainties that accompany any creative, artistic process. His tight arrangements with the swift shifts in rhythm and colors bring to mind the great bands of Charles Mingus. All these qualities are immediately summarized in the opening, 30-second piece "En Bra Start Pa Dagen."

Other pieces highlight Zetterberg as a resourceful and thoughtful composer, with a gift for sketching an evocative, even exotic story, as on "Varlden Ar Sig Aldrig Lik" and "Visa Fran Mitten av Universum." The powerful reed section—Santos, trombonist Mats Aleklint and sax players Kullhammar and Alberto Pinton—produce myriad colors. Zetterberg uses the same strong, opinionated musicians to question basic composition on the open-form piece,"Mastare av Vad."

"Ingen Tid Till Ingenting" is a concise, muscular and fast post-bop piece that stresses the ensemble as a tight, massive unit. "DO-DODO- DO-DO-DO" and "1+1=1" continue in the same vein featuring brilliant, passionate solos. The clarinets of Kullhammar and Pinton add a fragile, gentle colors to the lyrical,"Hyllning Till Ovissheten," that also features a beautiful solo by Zetterberg.

Brilliant, profound and inspiring. [Allaboutjazz]

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