Eirik Hegdal x 3 for Kongsberg Jazz Festival
Last year's recipient of the festival's major musician prize will be seen in a triple format during this year's Kongsberg Jazz Festival on three different days with three different constellations.
Saxophonist and composer Eirik Hegdal recipient of the Kongsberg Jazz Festival's big musician prize of NOK 200.000 during last year's festival. The jury wanted to emphasize Hegdal's outstanding abilities as an instrumentalist, and his educational work. In the justification, emphasis is placed on the award winner's diverse work. Hegdal was for a long period artistic director of the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra and during this time led the orchestra to a number of artistic triumphs, several times in collaboration with international prides such as Joshua Redman and Dave Holland.
"Eirik Hegdal is a musical powerhouse, not just for Trondheim, but for the whole country," says Tor Dalaker Lund, member of the jury for the Kongsberg Jazz Festival's musician prize.
As a composer, Hegdal has written works for the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra, the Vertavo Quartet and the Trondheim Sinfonietta, in addition to countless jazz compositions both for his own and other bands. He has also, in collaboration with Asle Karstad and Trondheim Voices, won a Hedda prize for audiovisual design and sound design for the theater performance Hundre hemmelighet.
As last year's recipient of the festival's major musician prize, Hegdal can say:
“I've been given the chance to put together new ensembles! It's incredibly fun to create new music for compositions/musicians you've dreamed of uniting. With the prize, I have had time to sit down and design new music. It is a privilege. A bit like going back to my student days.”
Thursday 04.07.2019/17/30 @ Sølvsalen, XNUMX:XNUMX
'One One One' with Johan Lindstöm
Eirik Hegdal has composed new music and for Kongsberg 2019 he brings the colorful trio 'EnEnEn' together with the outstanding Swedish pedal steel guitarist Johan Lindström.
The work reveals a unique free-spirited and fresh universe, and it is easy to be fascinated by their creative interplay. Since their inception in 2007, they have released two colorful albums, 'Rød & Blå' (2010) and 'Grønn & Gul' (2017).
It will be a meeting between great musical ears, well organized with tailor-made music from Hegdal. We will hear beautiful music in many shades, which will hopefully be released in a new color-titled album after this Kongsberg premiere!
Eirik Hegdal – saxophonist, clarinetist, composer
Michael Francis Duch – double bass
Tor Haugerud – percussion
Tor Breivik – sound design
Johan Linderström has enriched Norwegian concertgoers with his pedal steel guitar playing with Susanne Sundfør. At home in Sweden, he is known for his work with various jazz greats, Ane Brun, Tonbruket, as well as his own Johan Lindström Septett. Hegdal can say that he got his first taste of Lindström's genius when he heard him with Per Texas Johanson (with music from the album "Alla mine kompisar") at a concert at Blå in Oslo in 1999.
Friday 05.07.2019 @ Lågdalsmuseet, 15:00
FOLK
Eirik Hegdal has selected a dream team to perform newly written music.
With "Følk", Hegdal wants to write music for strong individual voices that all have roots in traditional music. The music will also be colored by Hegdal's foothold in jazz, but will be stretched in the direction of Norwegian and Swedish folk music.
Here you can only enjoy a weave of beautiful and incredible vocals, a fiddle virtuoso, a drum magician and Hegdal himself at the Kongsberg Jazz Festival in 2019!
Eirik Hegdal – saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet
Sofia Jernberg – vocals
Unni Løvlid – vocals
Gjermund Larsen – fiddle
Hans Hulbækmo – percussion
Tor Breivik – sound design
Saturday 06.07.2019/17/30 @ Sølvsalen, XNUMX:XNUMX
Musical Balloon
On the balloon journey, Hegdal has a particularly inspired team of top musicians with him.
Together they did the first performance of 'Musical Balloon', which was the Tiningsverket at Vossa Jazz in 2018. In addition to the premiere causing great excitement among the audience, there was a press corps that smiled broadly from ear to ear. The jazz magazine, Downbeat wrote, among other things:
"... one of the best commissions of recent vintage". "... a fascinating suite in a micro-big band context, laced with theatricality, moments of swinging bravura and an overall narrative ebb-and-flow".
The music is refreshing, exuberant and yet unified; here are percussive, free syncopation, tight winds with leaps of joy, surprising melodies and continuous motifs. A micro-big band that with excess sends the energy on, let you rise up together with Hegdal's balloon!
Eirik Hegdal – clarinet, saxophone, bass clarinet
Mattias Ståhl – vibraphone
Jon Fält – percussion
Eivind Lønning – trumpet, piccolo trumpet
Nils-Olav Johansen – guitar, banjo, vocals
Ole Morten Vågan – double bass
Tor Breivik – sound design
A SIGNIFICANT JAZZ AWARD
The Kongsberg Jazz Festival's big musician prize (formerly the DNB prize) will go to a performer who has made a mark on the Norwegian jazz scene, and who at the same time shows potential for further development - both nationally and internationally. The jury believes that Eirik Hegdal fulfills these criteria by a good margin. As part of the award, the award winner holds a concert at the Kongsberg Jazz Festival the following year. The award recipients from the last two years, Susanna Wallumrød (2016) and Marius Neset (2017) have both returned to the festival the following year and performed three unique concerts in three different constellations.
Photo: Thomas Hegna
