Portrait: Anja Lauvdal
This year's musician prize went to Anja Lauvdal. In their reasoning, the jury emphasized her skill, and for having put a personal stamp on her music. Another element the jury commented on was that Anja playfully moves between different genres and masters a wide range of styles. It's all seasoned with musicality and curiosity.
Anja says that this year's award feels very special. After over a year without concerts, it means a lot to receive an award from such a stable concert organizer as Kongsberg. It was very touching for her.
- Just standing on a stage and looking out over a hall with 200 people in the hall, that in itself was very special, she says. It feels very different than before, but it is very good to feel gratitude. It is important that Norway has good concert organizers and creates a good culture for musicians, she emphasizes.
The Jazz Festival's Musician's Award opens the door to experimentation and deepening for the newly minted award recipient:
- The best thing about the award is that it gives the opportunity to create something new and get support for it, she says, and says that she wants to work more with the collaboration with the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra. At the same time, Anja keeps a button on being open to what may come, and which she believes has been a positive experience from the pandemic - that the road is created while we live, and that it is okay to take time. That's something such a price opens up for.
In response to the question about her courage to be cross-genre, she quickly replies that it is something of the times. As part of the internet generation, she has also gained access to all kinds of music.
- What has previously been defined as given genres, didn't feel like it, and that's how it is for many of us, says the award winner. Anja has collaborated with Norwegian musicians such as Selma French, the Wallumrød siblings and others with whom she shares this open musical approach.
Anja is also keen to go back to see what there is of different voices from earlier times, and which did not receive the recognition they should have received from their contemporaries. Here, the award winner will find a lot to recognize, and to check in to see that "it is as it was told". This search process is rich and rewarding for her. It feels like history lessons with playfulness, she says.
The Musikerpris winner has many sources of inspiration, but she has had no clear musical heroes. However, Norwegian music has been important to her as it was to Selma French Bolstad and Erlend Apneset within folk music, or the Wallumrød siblings. At the same time, she has not experienced herself as locked into jazz, but has been inspired by films and moods.
- Musically, there are so many cool voices in Norway such as Lasse Marhaug, Maja Ratkje and Paal Nilssen-Love. These are also expressions that have carved themselves out to become genres in their own way, emphasizes Lauvdal. They move within the same environment, and that is especially true for Norway, which in turn means that much is legal and provides an open framework, concludes this year's award winner.
Text: Ann-Mari Lofthus / Photo: Nina Djærff