Bass maker Andersen

Text: Johan Hauknes, June 2021 / Photo: Nina Djærff

The virus with the formal name SARS-cov-2 not only put a solid stop to the implementation of the ordinary jazz festival at Kongsberg in 2020. A few months later, the strong attempt to create Jazz Weekend, twenty weeks after the usual week 27, was also in November of the same year stopped by the same virus.

After festival manager Kai Gustavsen moved to Sandvika in Bærum after an interlude in the county bureaucracy, new staff took over the old police station on Kirketorget. The first task for the new festival manager Ragnhild Menes, the program for the festival in 2021 was the first task.

In 2020, the festival would celebrate jazz bass master Arild Andersen's 75th anniversary, first during the canceled 2020 festival, then at the end of October with a big anniversary concert. But the pandemic ruined all such plans. The anniversary concert will instead be held on Friday 9 July 2021 in Kongsberg Musikkteater in Krona with an all-star band put together for the occasion. At the anniversary concert you will meet Georg "Jojje" Wadenius, Trygve Seim, Thomas Strønen and Frode Alnæs. Andersen has played with them all before, but never like this, together on one board.

In connection with Andersen's 75th birthday, Johan Hauknes will also on Thursday at 16.00 have a sofa conversation with Arild Andersen in the hall Jacob at Krona. The conversation will not only be about Andersen's long history with the festival since his concert debut in 1967. During the conversation, music from some of these Kongsberg concerts will also be played, we hope to also include music that has not been heard since the concert took place.
In connection with the 75th birthday, I had a conversation with Arild Andersen about some of his Kongsberg stories. I would also like to hear what his thoughts are about the anniversary concert in 2021. You can also read more about Arild Andersen's stories at the Kongsberg jazz festival in an article entitled "King Arild of the Silver City", published in the festival's jazz blog.

The last shall be the first

In 16, a 17-1962-year-old guitarist from Strømmen outside Oslo discovered a bit of the double bass's beauty and possibilities. Almost sixty years later, the young guitarist is known far beyond Strømmen and Norway, but it is not the guitar that his name is associated with. The guitarist who became a bass player with a big international name - Arild Andersen - is sitting in front of me.

- If you were to point out any highlights from the concerts you have played at Kongsberg since the start in 1967, what would it be?

- Of course it's the concert in the cinema with Sonny Rollins. But I would also like to highlight the concert with Don Cherry, Billy Higgins and Frank Lowe in 1975.

- The concert with Radka [Toneff] in the cinema in 1977, with Jon Eberson, Jon Christensen, Knut Riisnæs and Lars Janson. [A concert that, thanks to the festival's long-standing sound manager, Kristian Ludvik-Bøhmer, is available on NRK's ​​historical online TV!]

- I must also highlight the quartet concert in 2009 with Tommy [Smith], Paolo [Vinaccia] and Carsten Dahl. As far as I remember, you gave this concert both seven and ten stars yourself, right?

- The quintet concert in 2011 with pianist Marcin Wasilewski, Patrice Héral on drums, Markus Stockhausen on trumpet and Tommy [Smith] was a memorable concert.

- I also remember with great pleasure the trio concert the year before, in 2010, with Bill Frisell and Jan Erik Vold [where Jan Erik Vold read his own translations of Wallace Stevens. Incidentally, the concert was later released on a recommended record, "Blackbird Bye Bye", on Hot Club Records].

- The anniversary concert in 2014. When I had with me Billy Hart on drums, Bobo Stenson, Bendik Hofseth, and not least Joshua Redman.

- There are so many memories...

- At the anniversary concert you will play with a dream team with "Jojje" Wadenius, Trygve Seim, Thomas Strønen, and not least Frode Alnæs. How did the plan for this concert come about? What can we expect?

- I am really looking forward to this concert. At first I thought of using the quartet with Marius [Neste], Helge [Lien] and Håkon [Mjåset Johansen]. But it could not be done.

- I have been thinking about doing something with Trygve Seim for a long time. It has been a goal to try to change the soundscape around myself. Together with Hege [Schøyen, Arild's life partner], I thought that Frode [Alnæs] and "Jojje" [Wadenius] would be exciting to hear together. And with Thomas [Strønen], with whom I have been involved in various contexts in recent years.

- The music I plan for the concert is taken from things I have made for film and theatre. This will be a concert with music I have used to a small extent in the past. There will also be some Masqualero material, with some songs that have never been recorded. It will partly be melodic songs... and maybe it will all be a bit slower than I usually do at concerts. It will be interesting!

Many of us are looking forward to this, if now the gods will allow it to be carried out.

The original plans also included a unique duo meeting between Arild Andersen and the American bassist Barre Phillips, eleven years older at the time. originally planned as part of the canceled festival in 2020. Unfortunately, it has not been possible to carry out this concert with the two 160-year-old nesters in bass hall dialogue and interaction.

Engineer Andersen plays jazz

- Congratulations on the day on 27 October. To get straight to the point: How did it all start?

- Thank you. When I started at Oslo Technical School as an almost 20-year-old engineering student in 1965, I was also in the Roy Hellvin Trio. It was me on bass, Roy Hellvin on piano and Svein "Chrico" Christiansen on drums. We had a few gigs around the Oslo area in the next few years - I guess we were a kind of Oslo comp during this period.

- Your first time at the Kongsberg Jazz Festival was when this trio was hired as festival comp for the Kongsberg Jazz Festival at the turn of June-July 1967.

- That is correct. At that time, as I said, I went to Oslo Technical School. The lab manager and he who taught us in the lab, it was the festival manager at Kongsberg, Per Ottersen. He taught electronics at school.

- It was normal teaching from 8.00 a.m. to around 15.00 - and then there was a lab from 15.00 to 17.00. Once I had to ask to be released from the lab. 'Per, I'm going to practice, can I get time off from the lab today?' The answer came contact, 'No. That is out of the question at all!'

- I was refused a jazz practice by Per Ottersen! I never forgave him for that! (laughter) We talked and chatted a lot, but getting time off to go and practice because I was going to play at his festival was out of the question. Then I had to be in his lab!

- So then I had to measure resistors and frequencies instead. How loud is 10 Hz? We learned that with a tone generator in Ottersen's lab. There we listened to 000 Hz, 100 Hz and 500 Hz. This later came in handy in medical listening tests, you know the kind where you have to press a button when you hear a sound in your right or left ear. If you have never heard a 1000 Hz from a tone generator, it is difficult to answer such tests correctly.

- So Ottersen must have it, he has ensured that I later got correct readings in such listening texts. Thanks to Per Ottersen, many years later I was able to measure the correct hearing and the correct frequency response.

- It is obvious that you have benefited greatly from some of the knowledge you gained, but did you never become an electronics engineer?

- No, when we left in 1968 we had learned everything about radio tubes, and based on that technology. But just then all tubes were thrown out, all were to have transistors instead.

- But besides this, I never took out the diploma for the study. When we were supposed to have the final exam in electrical machines, I delivered blank half an hour before the time ran out. I had to catch a flight to Montreux, where I was to play with Karin Krog, Jan Garbarek, Terje Bjørklund and Jon Christensen.

Karin Krog's quintet played in Casino at the Montreux Festival on 15 June 1968, with a program that included the standard song "Lazy Afternoon" and Garbarek's modal journeyman piece "Karin's Mode". Now it turns out that Andersen could still have obtained a passing certificate, despite a blank answer. But that's a story for another time.

- We must be able to say that you have managed quite well without the diploma?

- I have benefited from the education, yes. Quite early on, when I met Paul Bley, he asked if I had a pick-up on the bass, and if I could connect and use effects on the bass sound. Then it was not difficult for me to understand the signal path, the effect of the resistance in the circuits and how I could ensure that frequency bands did not drop out. I had learned this from Per Ottersen! So the Kongsberg festival has meant a lot to me! (loud laughter)

- Because of this background, I don't panic if I don't get sound in the amplifier, then I can quickly find the problem. I see other musicians who become completely paralyzed, and who shout at the sound man. Then someone comes and plugs them in for them. I manage the re-plugging myself, thanks to the lab manager at Oslo-tekniker'n. That's about all I have left after school.

The first steps on Kongsberg

We reminisce a bit by flipping through Andersen's scrap book from this time. I recognize copies of a number of Arthur Sand's great festival photos from that time, including a photo of Arild Andersen together with Espen Rud, clearly taken under very festive circumstances at Knutehytta in 1967.

- And there are pictures from the jam, yes! With Carmell Jones, ... and there's Frank Phipps, too.

- This was where you also played with Roland Kirk?

- Yes, including with Ron Burton and Alex Riel. I stood and waved to get Niels-Henning [Ørsted Pedersen] up on stage. But he didn't come. It seemed like Kirk was happy with my bass playing and wouldn't want it any other way.

The man who referred to himself as "the reed section" was so pleased with the playing of young Andersen that, according to contemporary newspaper reports, he expressed that he preferred the Norwegian to the Dane half a year younger on the bass.

- It was probably right after your debut at Kongsberg in 1967 that you joined Garbarek's group?

- I joined from autumn 1967. Every afternoon after school I went to Hallvard Kvåle's record shop in Vika in Oslo, below Tekniker'n [which was located on Ruseløkka]. One afternoon Kvåle said to me; 'Jan stopped by, he was wondering if you could call him'.

- I called Jan from the nearest telephone booth, and he asked if we could start practicing together. We started practicing with a sextet, Frank Phipps on trombone, Jarl Johansen on trumpet, "Calle" Neumann on alto sax, together with Jon Christensen and me.

- How was this? You didn't know Jan Garbarek when he asked for you in the early autumn of 1967?

- Of course I knew very well who he was, ... I think maybe we had played together at the jam in Molde that summer, in 1967. The first time I played with Jan - with Jon on drums - was at the Penguin Club on a Sunday. I brought the bass from Strømmen with me, I remember.

- 1968 was an active year at the festival for you, with concerts with Lucky Thompson, Jesper Thilo and "Calle" Neumann. But also a concert with Karin Krog with two basses, with you and Palle Danielsson. How did this come about?

- ... and with "Chrico" on drums. It was an idea that Karin Krog had. She had been to Sweden and played with Palle, I think. Palle [Danielsson] was probably at the festival to play with others as well. I can't remember if we played the whole concert with two basses. But at least I remember that we played the Beatles song "Day Tripper", along with "'Round About Midnight".

- It was really nice to meet Palle that time. Eventually we became very good friends, and ran into each other a lot over the years. I was at their summer place and at his house several times. I have had a special friendship with Palle for all these years. We haven't met much in recent years, he's probably not on Facebook, and soon it's only where you meet people, especially when, like now, you can't leave the house once.

We have such things to do…

- In 1971, three young musicians, Bobo Stenson on piano, Jon Christensen on drums and you on bass were thrown into it with Sonny Rollins. Rollins had retired two years earlier and no one knew where he was, until he appeared on Kongsberg in June 1971 and occupied the now burned down Sangerheimen by the Trondhjemmer'n pond below Gruveåsen. How was this?

- Yes, we were almost thrown into it. But that was also the way it was at the time. At this festival in 1971, I didn't just play with Sonny Rollins! Imagine playing with George Russell, Dizzy Gillespie, Don Cherry and Sonny Rollins at the same festival!

- But at the time we didn't think like that. Yes, I was going to play with some Americans, I guess it was nothing to make a fuss about. I had also just returned home from a tour with Stan Getz, so this was almost everyday (laughter).

- Many people ask me what it was like to be there or there, and play with this or that. When I think back on these things now, what today passes as jazz history, it wasn't really anything special. It was just the way it was. We didn't think then that we would be talking about this fifty years from now. It was just playing and having fun.

- But back to Sonny Rollins...

- Kjell Gunnar Hoff [for many years one of the central leaders at the festival] later sent me a copy of a letter from the correspondence with Rollins. There, the festival writes to Rollins that '... we can bring in more Norwegian musicians so that you can choose the comp, or we can ask the 'Danish comp' that you have probably played with before...'

- Then Rollins writes back that he likes to play with a Norwegian comp. But I probably suspect that the reason why he wanted to play with a Norwegian comp, and not with the Danish comp, was that he felt uncertain about his own playing status. He had played with Niels-Henning before this, together with Alan Dawson, and probably knew both Alex Riel and Kenny Drew well.

When Andersen here talks about the "Danish comp", it refers to a trio of Copenhagen-based musicians who were frequently used at, among other things, the Molde Festival as accompaniment for American touring musicians. The Danish group consisted of Alex Riel on drums, Kenny Drew on piano and bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen. Perhaps what Andersen tells here was an expression that this was an attempt by Rollins to sneak back on stage again, with what he perhaps saw as a not quite so high-profile concert at Kongsberg? Andersen continues,

- I think Rollins probably didn't know who we were. Bobo, Jon and I had already been out on tour with Stan Getz in 1970. Incidentally, this was the first time I met Bobo and played with him - we first met in Paris on the way to South Africa. We had also recorded "Underwear" together for ECM, a few weeks before the Kongsberg concert.

- We were supposed to rehearse with Rollins in the afternoon in the basement of Gyldenløve Hotell, it was probably the day before the concert. When we sat down in the basement there, and had packed up the drums and bass, after a while Rollins comes down and says hello. After the round of greetings, he asks straight out; "Can you guys play some calypso?" and started with "St. Thomas". Fortunately, we knew this song!

- I have to say that with all the comp situations I was in over these years, around five years in total, it was the case that if Jon [Christensen] was involved, there was never any problem. And it was so noticeable. Not to belittle any other Norwegian drummers! But there was something about Jon's playing style that always went down well with the soloists.

- Jon's playing style was always in order, and Bobo and I could keep up. And Rollins was very happy with this. We practiced a bit on "In a Sentimental Mood" and then we played a bit on "There Can Never Be Another You". And then there were a number of other songs he wanted to play.

- I remember that before the concert, behind the stage curtain - it was probably during the sound check or something similar - before the audience had come in, we played a bit of a song. I can't remember now which song it was, but it sounded great!

- And then the curtain went up for the concert, and Rollins began the same song. Then I immediately felt that the whole comp stiffened. It turned out in a strange way. Rollins played the song very briefly, and started a blues instead. Then it all fell into place. Then things were in order.

- It sounded so nice on stage behind the curtain before the concert, it really swung. But when the curtain went up, it's as if a claw came and grabbed hold of the band. I have never experienced anything like this so clearly in similar situations. I have a strong memory of the claw that got into us, that the swing was completely gone.

- That feeling, where you fight to make it swing, it's heavy. But then it luckily let go... and then it was a good stroll from there to the finish line.

When Arild Andersen almost played with Philly Joe Jones

After being in New York in 1972-73, Arild Andersen returned to Norway and formed his first band in which he himself was the leader.

- This new quartet comes to Kongsberg already in the first year, in 1974. You have two 'kids' with you, Jon Balke and Pål Thowsen. You were about the same age yourself when you joined Roy Hellvin's trio in 1964?

- Eventually, there are quite a few twenty-year-olds who have left their mark on jazz. The two of them are among them. One of Pål's great role models was Tony Williams, another youth who left a mark. Pål knew Tony Williams' stuff, he was very inspired by that.

- Two years later, in 1976, Jon Balke and Knut Riisnæs were replaced by Lars Janson and Juhani Altonen.

- That is correct. Then we also played at Kongsberg, in the Gyldenløve basement. What happened that time was special.

- We had played all evening. While we were in the last song, an American musician comes up and asks Juhani to sit in with the band. He played drums and wanted to play with the band. 'It's the last song', Juhani replies to him, 'so maybe there's no point'!

– … This was Philly Joe Jones! That was the time I had the chance to play with him. I almost played with Philly Joe Jones! Philly Joe Jones was at this year's Kongsberg festival with a quartet he led together with saxophonist Sonny Stitt.

- I could have almost broken Juhani's leg for refusing Philly Joe Jones to sit in with my quartet. Damn it, that is! The one chance I had to play with Philly Joe Jones, it blew up right there at that concert. (laughter) Juhani did not know who this was, and also spoke little English, so it is not certain that he really understood that the person in question was asking to sit in on the drums.

- This stands out to me as one of the worst of such jam stories, Philly Joe wanted to sit in with my quartet, and wasn't allowed! It was quite a summer.

The Don Cherry Years

- For a couple of years at this time I was at the Kongsberg festival, but without being in the programme. Both of those years I played with Don Cherry. The first time was with drummer Okay Temiz and his wife. I was standing at the reception at Gyldenløve Hotell, it was about half past ten, and Temiz and Cherry were going to start the concert at half past seven. Then Don Cherry comes by, he's going to the cinema to play.

- Then he sees me and says, 'Are you coming to play?' 'You mean now?', I ask. 'Yes,' he says, 'come over and play'. So then I had to go up to my room, got the bass with me and went over to the cinema. Thus I took part in Don Cherry's concert, together with Okay Temiz, this year.

This was probably in 1971, when Don Cherry, in the festival's own history production, played at Kongsberg with a trio. In 1975, Don Cherry was back at Kongsberg, according to the same program history, this time with a sextet. Here he brought with him musicians who were also on the contemporary "Brown Rice" album. Arild Andersen tells about this second year with Don Cherry:

- In 1975, Don Cherry was back with, among others, Billy Higgins on drums and Frank Lowe on saxophone. I also attended this concert.

- Whether it was because Don [Cherry] hadn't got hold of me and then got hold of me at the last minute, or whether it was a then-and-then decision that I was in, I don't remember. But Don didn't want to rehearse, so there was no rush. He also played just as well without a bass as with a bass.

- At that time we also played a free concert in Magasinparken, a concert from which there is a small NRK clip. This year I thus got to play with Billy Higgins, it was incredibly fun. Billy Higgins' cymbal playing is fantastic. It's so easy and nice to play with.

- These two jobs with Don Cherry were nice to get along. To play with Billy Higgins was a dream. It's wonderful that it was possible.

If Arild Andersen was denied the pleasure of playing with Philly Joe Jones at Kongsberg, the year before he had been allowed to play with Billy Higgins. It was jazz history anyway.

Masqualero is born... at Kongsberg

- In 1983 you come to the festival in Kongsberg with a new band that will make a big mark in Norwegian jazz in the coming years. Again with some young, very promising musicians.

- Yes, that is what becomes Masqualero. I had ended my quartet, the band with Radka Toneff ended after Radka and I moved apart. It was a difficult time on many levels.

- Then I got a request to play a job at Kongsberg, at Odd Fellow, in the autumn of 1982. Then I asked Jon [Christensen], who had quit with Jan [Garbarek] and Jon Balke, who had then been out playing with a lots of people, if we could do a trio job there, on 15 September.

- Already that same year I had met Tore Brunborg and Nils Petter Molvær at Toneheim Folkehøgskole, on a jazz weekend where I was a teacher. One of the days I sat and practiced with Per Hillestad, bass and drums. Then the door opens and Tore enters. 'Can I play with you?', he asks. Then he comes in, takes off his jacket, puts it behind him as usual on the floor, together with the saxophone case and shoes. Then he came up and we started playing. I remember we played "Freedom Jazz Dance".

- That sounded good. And when we finished, Tore says briefly, 'this was fun'. Then he gathers up his things and just disappears, and then we see nothing more of him.

- In the autumn, when I was supposed to have the trio job at Kongsberg, Jon [Christensen] said one day that, 'we shouldn't bring two wind players, then?' Jon had, together with Jon Balke, taken part in the play "Oo Dja Na" at the Nationaltheatret. Tore and Nils Petter had also played there. So Jon knew about them. 'Fine', I replied, 'bring them along'.

- With that we got a quintet. But we didn't have time to rehearse, so we just rehearsed in the public transport bus on the way there. I had some songs with me, and then I also had a cassette I had gotten from a guy in Sweden. It was a recording of Miles Davis from the Antibes festival on 26 July 1969, including the Wayne Shorter song "Masqualero". We planned it more or less from this recording in the bus on the way to Kongsberg. I guess we went more or less straight that night. I think we played the Wayne Shorter song already this first night.

- A new jazz club had opened in Borggården behind the town hall in Oslo this autumn. We played there a week later in the autumn, with John Surman on saxophone - Tore couldn't play. After that, Tore and Nils Petter received a request from the Norwegian Jazz Association's record company Odin if they wanted to record an album. They wanted to, but they wanted to do it with what was then my band, the Arild Andersen quintet. That record became the album "Masqualero". So it all started at Kongsberg on 15 September 1982.

At the festival in 1983, the quintet was back - and now they played "Masqualero". The album "Masqualero", which gave the quintet its later name, came out on Odin later that year. The recording took place shortly after the 1983 festival at Kongsberg had ended.

Sine Arild, right?

Since 1967, Arild Andersen has been a central part of the movement that created the new Norwegian jazz. He has been an active part of the history where jazz in many ways became Norwegian.

- Something fundamental happens in Norwegian jazz life precisely in the years leading up to this, in 1965-66-67.

- This is probably somewhat connected with Jan and Karin, and that Jon and I got into this. That we were looking for ideas other than American be-bop, post-bop. Things had already started to happen in the US too, with the Art Ensemble of Chicago, those that Jan was inspired by, Albert Ayler and the like.

- Something happened in many places, not just in Norway. I was very interested in a freedom in the music, a focus on free jazz...and when you look back on it, you can perhaps see some kind of development.

- It happens in Germany, in the Netherlands, in the USA, in England, in Sweden... and it happens in Norway. But along all these lines of development the music finds different expressions. While international jazz previously largely revolved around one common jazz tradition, it now becomes a broad spectrum, a large and multifaceted bouquet of different expressions, all with a relationship to what in Norwegian was called "freebag".

- German freebag was very different from Dutch freejazz, while in Sweden it happened much more moderately than in many other countries. And in Denmark, nothing happened! Here in Norway, a kind of melodic freebag developed.

- German freebag had a much more violent expression, while in England the focus was more on a kind of composition-based freebag. Dutch freebag, led by Han Bennink among others, was individualistically oriented, a kind of equilibrist freebag,

- Then around 1973-74 this turned more into a more harmonically focused, more rhythmic, a clearer relationship to time, in a way it returned again to a starting point.

- This becomes clear when you make your first quartet in 1974. Then you return, in a way, to a framework that goes back to Miles Davis' second quintet after 1965, what has often been called post-bop. But it's still kind of a freebag.

- That's right, where you simultaneously expand with open solos without chords, without a fixed length. It was a free interplay, with agreed landing spots where we could gather again.

- When you look back, there are some long lines. Why it happens like this, I don't know.

Warm lines in soft music

With this closing open question, we say thank you to bass maker Arild Andersen. It is as if the big question of what shaped, and still shapes, Norwegian improvised music opens up here for a Hegelian dialectical analysis – an analysis through the well-known formula thesis → antithesis → synthesis. The music seems to return, but it returns in a different place, with a different setting, with a different expression.

Answering the questions this raises would require a larger and deeper discussion and analysis of the history of Norwegian improvised music after 1965. A study that would have to go far beyond the scope of this interview. But one thing is certain, the Kongsberg jazz festival has throughout this history been a central and active part of history. That in itself is worth highlighting.

While we ponder these and other questions related to the history of music, we can at least sit back and enjoy some of the long and singing lines in Arild Andersen's music during the upcoming jazz festival at Kongsberg.