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Silent Ways

Cæcilie Norby

Silent Ways

Format: CD
Label: ACT music
UPC: 0614427972521
Catnr: ACT 9725
Release date: 06 December 2013
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1 CD
Buy at PlatoMania
 
Label
ACT music
UPC
0614427972521
Catalogue number
ACT 9725
Release date
06 December 2013

"The result is amazing, by the use of other paces and the special instrumentation the rather different from the originals without becoming diluted or even stronger."

Rootstime, 28-1-2014
Album
Artist(s)
Composer(s)
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About the album

It's not all that long ago that the boundaries between classical, pop and jazz were easily defined, in the European middle classes especially, there was seldom a way back when a direction seemed to be defined. And so it was that the 14 year-old Dane Caecilie Norby found herself in the classical world – her mother was an opera singer, her father a composer – until one day a school party shook the foundations of her musical structures. Music by Creedence Clearwater Revival was being played and it fascinated her: "Up to then, it had been Mozart who had charmed my inner princess, but that night made it fully clear to me that that music was the same thing in different wrapping paper," she recalls. "My young, innocent, cultivated universe made entirely of classical music had been changed forever. Dylan didn't hit the notes when singing, Fogerty played the same four chords over and over, very loudly, and yet it worked: I was riveted by the melancholy feeling of this melodic soul-rock."

Since then, Norby listens solely to her heart and evaluates the musical quality of melodies fully free of genre restrictions. She became a star in her own country with her funk-jazz band "Frontline" and the pop duo "One Two" together with Nina Forsberg, before her bridge between the genres caused an international furore, becoming the first Scandinavian woman to be signed by Blue Note. It is a path between worlds that her ACT debut "Arabesque" (9723-2) defined two years ago: She wrote her own lyrics to classical works, from Rimski-Korsakov and Ravel to Michel Legrand, and transported them to jazz with the aid of her husband Lars Danielsson and their band.

Now, with her second ACT album "Silent Ways" she goes back in the other direction to some extent. She selected a dozen of her favourite singer/songwriter melodies – including "Hymnen" by herself and her husband, and charged them up with classical and jazz influences. The almost chamber-musical, tranquil form hinted at by the album's name is classical, as is the emotional expressiveness of her interpretations – just listen to her meditative, almost spiritual versions of the Leonard-Cohen songs "Winter Lady" and "In My Secret Life". The jazzy approach lies in the singing technique, in the arrangement, and of course the hand-picked musicians in the band improvising magically together.

"At the start of recording, we demanded that all the musicians put their life story on the table," Norby reports. And how they did! The unmistakable Asian lines of star guitarist Nguyên Lê are especially apparent on "Like A Rolling Stone". Leszek Możdżer contributes the swirling rhythmic and melodramatic harmonies of the eastern European music tradition, most obviously on "Black Hole Sun". Drummer and percussionist Robert Mehmet Ikiz brings the polyrhythmic of his Turkish roots and the Nordic groove of his Swedish homeland with him. Lars Danielsson then refines it all with his enchantingly melodious bass and cello lines.

A powerful, thrilling, convincing mix, on the classics like Bob Dylan's "Like A Rolling Stone", John Fogerty's "Have You Ever Seen The Rain" and Paul Simon's "Hearts And Bones", on the earthly tracks like Barrett Strong's "Papa Was A Rolling Stone", the originally bulky works like Tom Waits' "Diamonds And Gold", the Indie-rock anthem "Hurt" by Nine Inch Nails genius Trent Reznor or on the loungey title track "Silent Ways" composed by Wolfgang Haffner, to which Norby contributes her wonderful lyrics. It is "the sound of the new, European jazz" that vocalist Caecilie Norby stands for like no other, the way she best defines it.

Artist(s)

Nguyên Lê

'Nobody plays guitar like him,' wrote the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper about Nguyên Lê; the very first exclusive ACT artist ever. Born of Vietnamese parents in Paris in 1959, Nguyên Lê is one of the most versatile and independent guitarists in the world – going far beyond the bounds of jazz music and shaped by the most varied of influences such as Asian music, modern jazz, fusion or classic rock. Gitarist Ngyuên Lê is a very particular jazz musician for a number of reasons: Even though he lives in Paris where he was born in 1959, he feels very connected to the cultural background of his Vietnamese family. He furthermore is self taught and just started to play the drums by...
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"Nobody plays guitar like him," wrote the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper about Nguyên Lê; the very first exclusive ACT artist ever. Born of Vietnamese parents in Paris in 1959, Nguyên Lê is one of the most versatile and independent guitarists in the world – going far beyond the bounds of jazz music and shaped by the most varied of influences such as Asian music, modern jazz, fusion or classic rock.
Gitarist Ngyuên Lê is a very particular jazz musician for a number of reasons: Even though he lives in Paris where he was born in 1959, he feels very connected to the cultural background of his Vietnamese family. He furthermore is self taught and just started to play the drums by the age of 15, but soon switched to the guitar.
He entered the music business in 1983 playing with the Afro-Caribbean band “Ultramarin“. His impressive career really kicked off after joining the French “Orchestre National du Jazz” in 1987. Already his first solo albums – released at the beginning of the 90es – attracted a large and still growing audience.
Lê had his German debut in collaboration with the Jazzpãna-Ensemble in 1993. It was exceedingly well received by critics and fans. Newspaper “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung“ was even raving about his playing: „There is no other human playing the guitar like Lê!“. ACT-boss Siggi Loch just felt the same and Nguyên Lê became his label’s first exclusive artist.
To this day, Lê released no less than 12 albums on ACT. He has played with almost every important and famous European or American jazz artist. He is a regular guest to WDR Big Band and has founded several bands and ensembles, whereof trio E_L_B (with Peter Erskine und Michel Benita) and Lê’s “Jimi Hendrix Project” are the most successful and well-known.

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Lars Danielsson

Swedish bassist, cellist, composer and arranger Lars Danielsson is well-know and admired throughout the International jazz scene for his lyrical playing and strong groove. Born in 1958, he is a musician with particularly broad interests. At the conservatory in Gothenburg he had studied classical cello, before changing to bass and to jazz. As a bassist he has a uniquely rounded sound, which is as lyrical as powerful. The 'Lars Danielsson Quartet' with former Miles Davis saxophonist David Liebman, pianist Bobo Stenson and legendary ECM drummer Jon Christensen has received a lot of recognition and numerous awards during the 18 years of its existence. Danielsson has released ten solo-albums since 1980 with his quartet and guests such as Alex Acuña and John Abercrombie....
more

Swedish bassist, cellist, composer and arranger Lars Danielsson is well-know and admired throughout the International jazz scene for his lyrical playing and strong groove. Born in 1958, he is a musician with particularly broad interests. At the conservatory in Gothenburg he had studied classical cello, before changing to bass and to jazz. As a bassist he has a uniquely rounded sound, which is as lyrical as powerful.

The "Lars Danielsson Quartet" with former Miles Davis saxophonist David Liebman, pianist Bobo Stenson and legendary ECM drummer Jon Christensen has received a lot of recognition and numerous awards during the 18 years of its existence. Danielsson has released ten solo-albums since 1980 with his quartet and guests such as Alex Acuña and John Abercrombie. The Quartet has been a testing ground for Danielsson’s work as a composer and arranger, which has extended over the last years to include both - symphony orchestra and big band music. He has worked with Denmark’s Radio Concert Orchestra as well as the JazzBaltica Ensemble as a composer, arranger and producer.

Lars Danielsson has worked with: Randy and Michael Brecker, John Scofield, Jack DeJohnette, Mike Stern, Billy Hart, Charles Lloyd, Terri Lyne Carrington and Dave Kikoski. He has also been a member of the "Trilok Gurtu Group".

As a producer, Lars Danielsson worked with Cæcilie Norby, Jonas Johansen, the Danish Radio Concert Orchestra and Viktoria Tolstoy.

In 2007, he received a commission for a piece with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestrafeaturing himself as a soloist together with Leszek Moždžer. He has also received a commission from the NDR Big Band and Wolfgang Haffner to write a piece for the JazzBaltica Festival 2007. Furthermore, he has been working with the St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra in collaboration with Vytas Sondeckis and Bugge Wesseltoft.

His 2008 album “Pasodoble” was a huge success. Jazzwise UK wrote about Danielsson’s collaboration with Polish pianist Leszek Moždžer: “A clarity of thought and execution rarely encountered in jazz.”

“Pasodoble” was followed by another collaboration with Leszek Moždžer on the 2009 album “Tarantella”. Once more the album caused enthusiastic reactions by Jazzwise: “Easily Danielsson’s finest album to date, it also numbers among the finest albums in the ACT catalogue.”

On his most recent album “Liberetto”, Lars Daniellson teams up with Armenian piano shooting Star “Tigran”, e.s.t. drummer Magnus Öström guitarist John Paricelli and Trumpeter Arve Henriksen to discovers new musical spaces and the freedom of music between chamber jazz, classic and European folk music.


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Cæcilie Norby

The daughter of two classical musicians – her mother was an opera singer, her father a composer – Caecilie Norby has always been a traveller between different worlds of music – jazz, blues, soul, pop, rock and classical – Norby can do it all, and that always in an absolutely distinctive way. She was the first female Danish artist to garner a recording deal with the legendary Blue Note label, and she has worked with many international stars from the widest range of fields. Perhaps the most important of these is the bass player Lars Danielsson, who not only became her husband, but also the producer and partner on almost all of her projects. With almost half a million albums...
more
The daughter of two classical musicians – her mother was an opera singer, her father a composer – Caecilie Norby has always been a traveller between different worlds of music – jazz, blues, soul, pop, rock and classical – Norby can do it all, and that always in an absolutely distinctive way. She was the first female Danish artist to garner a recording deal with the legendary Blue Note label, and she has worked with many international stars from the widest range of fields. Perhaps the most important of these is the bass player Lars Danielsson, who not only became her husband, but also the producer and partner on almost all of her projects. With almost half a million albums sold, Caecilie Norby is one of the most successful female jazz musicians in Europe and one of the key figures representing the bridge between pop and jazz.

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Leszek Możdżer

An outstanding pianist, composer and producer, Leszek Możdżer is widely considered to be Polish Jazz’s greatest revelation of the last decade. Born in 1971, he has been playing the piano since the age of five. He completed every stage of formal education until graduating in 1996 from the Stanisław Moniuszko Academy of Music in Gdańsk. He became interested in jazz relatively late – in his last grade – when he was 18. He was introduced to jazz in the band of Emil Kowalski, a clarinet player, but his proper start took place at his first rehearsal with a band called Miłość (Love) back in 1991. One year later he received an individual award at the International Jazz Competition Jazz Juniors...
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An outstanding pianist, composer and producer, Leszek Możdżer is widely considered to be Polish Jazz’s greatest revelation of the last decade. Born in 1971, he has been playing the piano since the age of five. He completed every stage of formal education until graduating in 1996 from the Stanisław Moniuszko Academy of Music in Gdańsk. He became interested in jazz relatively late – in his last grade – when he was 18. He was introduced to jazz in the band of Emil Kowalski, a clarinet player, but his proper start took place at his first rehearsal with a band called Miłość (Love) back in 1991. One year later he received an individual award at the International Jazz Competition Jazz Juniors ’92 held in Cracow. He was also a member of the Zbigniew Namysłowski Quartet. In the poll organized among Jazz Forum readers Możdżer was chosen as the Most Promising Musician of the year 1993 and 1994, and the Best Jazz Pianist – in each consecutive year since 1994. Leszek was also many times honored as The Musician of the Year.

On many occasions Leszek Możdżer recorded music with Zbigniew Preisner (Requiem for my friend, 10 easy pieces for piano). He also works on a regular basis with Jan Kaczmarek, Polish composer living in LA, while recording music scores (for 20th Century Fox and Miramax). He has been invited to perform jointly with the most gifted and renowned Polish jazz musicians, such as: Tomasz Stańko, Janusz Muniak, Michał Urbaniak, Anna Maria Jopek, Adam Pierończyk and Piotr Wojtasik.

Możdżer has also performed and recorded with many internationally acclaimed musicians, including David Friesen, Pat Metheny, Arthur Blythe, Buster Williams, Billy Harper, Joe Lovano, Archi Shepp, David Liebman, Charles Fox, Lester Bowie, David Gilmour, Marcus Miller, John Scofield, Steve Swallow, Eddie Daniels and Tan Dun.

Since 2011 Leszek Możdżer has been the Artistic director of the music festival, Enter Music Festival, held annually in Poznań, on the Lake Strzeszyńskim shoreline.

Leszek Możdżer has recorded over 100 albums, many of them released under his name


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Composer(s)

Lars Danielsson

Swedish bassist, cellist, composer and arranger Lars Danielsson is well-know and admired throughout the International jazz scene for his lyrical playing and strong groove. Born in 1958, he is a musician with particularly broad interests. At the conservatory in Gothenburg he had studied classical cello, before changing to bass and to jazz. As a bassist he has a uniquely rounded sound, which is as lyrical as powerful. The 'Lars Danielsson Quartet' with former Miles Davis saxophonist David Liebman, pianist Bobo Stenson and legendary ECM drummer Jon Christensen has received a lot of recognition and numerous awards during the 18 years of its existence. Danielsson has released ten solo-albums since 1980 with his quartet and guests such as Alex Acuña and John Abercrombie....
more

Swedish bassist, cellist, composer and arranger Lars Danielsson is well-know and admired throughout the International jazz scene for his lyrical playing and strong groove. Born in 1958, he is a musician with particularly broad interests. At the conservatory in Gothenburg he had studied classical cello, before changing to bass and to jazz. As a bassist he has a uniquely rounded sound, which is as lyrical as powerful.

The "Lars Danielsson Quartet" with former Miles Davis saxophonist David Liebman, pianist Bobo Stenson and legendary ECM drummer Jon Christensen has received a lot of recognition and numerous awards during the 18 years of its existence. Danielsson has released ten solo-albums since 1980 with his quartet and guests such as Alex Acuña and John Abercrombie. The Quartet has been a testing ground for Danielsson’s work as a composer and arranger, which has extended over the last years to include both - symphony orchestra and big band music. He has worked with Denmark’s Radio Concert Orchestra as well as the JazzBaltica Ensemble as a composer, arranger and producer.

Lars Danielsson has worked with: Randy and Michael Brecker, John Scofield, Jack DeJohnette, Mike Stern, Billy Hart, Charles Lloyd, Terri Lyne Carrington and Dave Kikoski. He has also been a member of the "Trilok Gurtu Group".

As a producer, Lars Danielsson worked with Cæcilie Norby, Jonas Johansen, the Danish Radio Concert Orchestra and Viktoria Tolstoy.

In 2007, he received a commission for a piece with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestrafeaturing himself as a soloist together with Leszek Moždžer. He has also received a commission from the NDR Big Band and Wolfgang Haffner to write a piece for the JazzBaltica Festival 2007. Furthermore, he has been working with the St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra in collaboration with Vytas Sondeckis and Bugge Wesseltoft.

His 2008 album “Pasodoble” was a huge success. Jazzwise UK wrote about Danielsson’s collaboration with Polish pianist Leszek Moždžer: “A clarity of thought and execution rarely encountered in jazz.”

“Pasodoble” was followed by another collaboration with Leszek Moždžer on the 2009 album “Tarantella”. Once more the album caused enthusiastic reactions by Jazzwise: “Easily Danielsson’s finest album to date, it also numbers among the finest albums in the ACT catalogue.”

On his most recent album “Liberetto”, Lars Daniellson teams up with Armenian piano shooting Star “Tigran”, e.s.t. drummer Magnus Öström guitarist John Paricelli and Trumpeter Arve Henriksen to discovers new musical spaces and the freedom of music between chamber jazz, classic and European folk music.


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Wolfgang Haffner

Wolfgang Haffner is unique: he has a phenomenal sense of drive and propulsion, a versatility which allows him to play in many idioms, an infallible instinct for focus and direct communication, and remarkable talents as a composer as well. This combination of skills and artistry are what have made him the most important drummer from Germany of his generation. He was born in 1965 in Wunsiedel in Franconia, a small town near the Czech border. As the son of a church music director and a piano teacher, he found his way into music very early. Haffner remembers clearly the day he became a drummer. He was just six years old when his father brought home a drum kit. 'It was...
more
Wolfgang Haffner is unique: he has a phenomenal sense of drive and propulsion, a versatility which allows him to play in many idioms, an infallible instinct for focus and direct communication, and remarkable talents as a composer as well. This combination of skills and artistry are what have made him the most important drummer from Germany of his generation. He was born in 1965 in Wunsiedel in Franconia, a small town near the Czech border. As the son of a church music director and a piano teacher, he found his way into music very early. Haffner remembers clearly the day he became a drummer. He was just six years old when his father brought home a drum kit. "It was there in the room. I just sat down behind it, and that was it." Already as a teenager he was drumming his way through the regional music scene with sensational results, and it was not long before his talent was really spotted: at 18 the great Albert Mangelsdorff took him into his band. This was to be a 20-year association, and their partnership was to prove hugely formative for Haffner both as musician and as a person. As his star rose ever higher, Haffner’s irrepressible energy and zest for playing brought him to work with countless stars and across all styles: he played in the big bands of Peter Herbolzheimer, WDR and NDR; for two years while still in his twenties he was in Chaka Khan's band, he spent eleven years with Klaus Doldinger’s Passport, four years with Konstantin Wecker... He worked with a host of jazz musicians including Al Jarreau, Pat Metheny, Nils Landgren, Jan Garbarek, Randy Brecker, Bugge Wesseltoft, Nils Petter Molvaer, Mike Stern, Larry Carlton, Ivan Lins and the German all-star band Old Friends. And there were also stars from the pop and hip-hop scene such as Nightmares on Wax, the Fantastischen Vier, Xavier Naidoo, and Max Mutzke. In the fusion genre he was in the quartet Metro as well as producer of the Icelandic band Mezzoforte for their album "Forward Motion". Well over 400 recordings and thousands of concerts (including a 280-day world tour in 2000 and a total of 28 tours of Asia alone to date!). He has played in over 100 countries worldwide. One reason why Haffner is always in such demand is that playing the drums for him is never an end in itself, he always puts himself at the service of the music and of the band. This is especially evident in his own projects, contexts which reveal a musician who is complete, yet always curious and open to following new directions. These qualities shine through in his NuJazz project Zappelbude, founded together with keyboardist Roberto Di Gioia, a band which was far ahead of its time in the 1990s; and also in his ACT debut under his own name, "Shapes", recorded by the quintet in 2006, which he revived two years later in a purely acoustic trio version; or with "Round Silence", for which he received an ECHO Jazz award in 2010; and in "Heart of the Matter", on which he is joined by his friends Götz Alsmann, Till Brönner, Thomas Quasthoff, Sebastian Studnitzky and Sting’s guitarist Dominic Miller. Among this long list career highlights, probably his most important and personal project is one that he has completed in the past six years. It is his trilogy of albums entitled "Kind of...". Whereas the sound of funk, electronica or pop had often been a major focus up to this point, Haffner dedicated himself in this trilogy to three themes that are personal to him, and recorded the music in a much more intimate small-group setting. "Kind of Cool", released in 2015, features the great heroes of cool jazz, figures who were influential for Haffner in his formative years - "Dave Brubeck's Carnegie Hall concert was my first record." The album brings that period into the present with a European all-star band. Here are memories of such greats as Miles Davis, Chet Baker or John Lewis and others, which Haffner transforms into a very personal homage. That is equally true of the second part, "Kind of Spain", his 2017 declaration through jazz of love for flamenco and the Mediterranean music of his former adoptive country - Haffner lived on Ibiza for several years. It won him another ECHO Jazz award in 2018. His list of awards is long, and includes the Kulturpreis Bayern, the Großer Preis der Stadt Nürnberg and the Joachim-Ernst-Behrendt-Ehrenpreis der Stadt BadenBaden. The title and theme of the album which concluded the trilogy, released in February 2020, probably took a lot of people by surprise: "Kind of Tango". Haffner has, however, wanted to emphasize that this is not a typical tango album, but rather a re-imagining of the feel and the spirit of the tango into his own musical universe, inspired by Astor Piazzolla and others. This is an area which has interested him for a long time, and particularly since a concert with the German Allstars in 2004 at the famous Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires. Long-time colleagues such as bassist Lars Danielsson and vibraphonist Christopher Dell are with him on "Kind of Tango", together with stars from abroad like Ulf Wakenius and Vincent Peirani, but also amazing youngup-and-coming, talented people such as pianist Simon Oslender and the singer Alma Naidu. Such habits of bringing on younger musicians run deep with Haffner; he was once given his chance to shine by Albert Mangelsdorff and now, in his turn, he is helping the next generation. These days Haffner is as focused as ever: on his music, on his band, on superb all-star projects like the recent 4-Wheel-Drive with Nils Landgren, Michael Wollny and Lars Danielsson, or on his role as Artistic Director of "Stars im Luitpoldhain" in Nuremberg, the biggest open-air jazz event in Europe which takes place every two years. And whatever new things he undertakes in the future, they will always be blessed with that unmistakable "Haffner touch".

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Press

The result is amazing, by the use of other paces and the special instrumentation the rather different from the originals without becoming diluted or even stronger.
Rootstime, 28-1-2014

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