Recruitment award to Øystein Skjelstad Østensen
This year's recipient of the Kongsberg Jazz Festival's recruitment award is bassist Øystein Skjelstad Østensen. The award winner plays two concerts in the Jazzbox during this year's festival, and will of course also play at next year's jazz festival.
Øystein Skjelstad Østensen started playing drums at the age of eight. - Two years later when me and the boys in the class (who all played drums) wanted to form a band - we just randomly handed out the instruments and I got bass. I also started playing double bass a few years later, says the award winner.
Øystein has been an important part of the environment on Kongsberg Cultural School, and in 2018 he took his exam in music at Kongsberg upper secondary school. He has played in many local bands, and was a solid supporter of Kongsberg Storband for a long time. There were many musicians three times his age who were greatly impressed by the youngster. He came in on The Norwegian Academy of Music on the first try, that alone says a lot about how skilled he is. In 2018, he was also one of the winners of the musician's prize during the Glogerfest games.
- In Oslo he makes a name for himself in new environments and meets new musicians to collaborate with, says jazz guru Tor Dalaker Lund. - He has on several occasions returned to his hometown and played at Jazz Evidence in new constellations, and it is of course inspiring for us as organizers to see that he is constantly developing. We have him on the program both in the autumn, at the Christmas jam and at Kongsbergkvelden, he concludes.
He plays in the Jazzbox on Thursday at 14:00 with "Andersen/Christoffernsen quintet" and Friday at 20:00 with "Appleslang".
Inspiration
As sources of musical inspiration, Øystein mentions jazz musicians such as Anders Jormin, Charlie Haden, Lars Danielsson, Jacob Collier, Esperanza Spaulding, Hanna Paulsberg and Bobo Stenson; and he also mentions several from classical music: Alban Berg, Steve Reich and Gustav Mahler (he places six exclamation points after Gustav Mahler!).
The recruitment price
In 2005, Kongsberg Jazzfestival established a recruitment grant of NOK 25.000 which was to go to young musicians from the Kongsberg region. The recruitment award will go to an "untouched" artist who deserves to fly out into the limelight, and from 2019 the jazz festival is collaborating with GKN Aerospace which contributes financially to the price. The purpose of the award is to stimulate young musicians who have shown promising and ambitious beats as jazz musicians or within jazz-related music. - It is the festival's hope and wish that the award will encourage the award winners to continue investing in music - in music education and a career as musicians, says festival manager Kai Gustavsen. - It is therefore very satisfying for the festival to be able to state that many of the previous award winners have fulfilled expectations and become central and highly recognized musicians in the Norwegian jazz environment. And several of them can be heard at this year's festival.
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