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Jazz Articles about Kjetil Møster
Vossa Jazz Festival at 52, with New Blood
by Josef Woodard
https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/photos/2010/9509f2e2a3547fddb4d7263cf3eb6ff5.jpg Each year around Easter, the lovely and smallish lakeside city of Voss, Norway springs to musical life for a weekend. Voss is a go-to destination for skiers flocking to the snowy slopes high above the town, and host to an extreme sports festival come summer. But the legendary Vossa Jazz festival, which staged an especially luminous 52nd anniversary edition in April, is a well-known cultural treasure--especially as a showcase for Norwegian jazz and jazz-adjacent artists.
Continue ReadingThe Core: Roots
by Mark Corroto
It has been over a decade since a release from the Norwegian jazz band The Core. Founded in 2001, the quartet released half a dozen albums before mostly going their separate ways. Saxophonist Kjetil Møster worked with Gard Nilssen, Mats Gustafsson, and Per Zanussi, pianist Erlend Slettevoll with Hedvig Mollestad and Petter Wettre, bassist Steinar Raknes with Tord Gustavsen, and drummer Espen Aalberg in the Basement Sessions with Jonas Kullhammar and Torbjörn Zetterberg. Roots, the ensemble's ninth recording, ...
Continue ReadingGard Nilssen's Supersonic Orchestra: Family
by Mark Corroto
Why can't all music be supersonic? That does not mean supersonic as in a speed exceeding that of sound, but sound that is sonically superlative. Drummer, composer, and bandleader Gard Nilssen's music is seemingly always sonically superb. His 17-piece Supersonic Orchestra was captured in 2022 at the Mondriaan Jazz Festival in Den Haag, Netherlands, for Family, his follow-up to If You Listen Carefully The Music Is Yours (Odin 2020). The Supersonic Orchestra is made up of seven saxophones ...
Continue ReadingThe End: Why Do You Mourn
by Mark Corroto
Why Do You Mourn is the third release by the Swedish/Norwegian group The End. Ethiopian-born Swedish vocalist Sofia Jernberg is backed by the double reedists Mats Gustafsson (The Thing, Fire! and Fire! Orchestra) and Kjetil Møster (Gard Nilssen's Supersonic Orchestra, Møster!, and Zanussi Five), plus guitarist Anders Hana (Circulasione Totale Orchestra) and drummer Børge Fjordheim. It follows two releases on the RareNoise Records label, Allt Är Intet (2020) and Svårmod Och Vemod Är Värdesinnen (2018). The sounds resemble ...
Continue ReadingKjetil Møster: Ran Do
by Mark Corroto
More than in any other American jazz scene, the musicians of Chicago have embraced and continue to embrace their colleagues in Europe and the UK. In the 1990s the Chicagoan Ken Vandermark began a long-standing association with Mats Gustafsson (Sweden) and Peter Brotzmann (Germany). And Hamid Drake has been crisscrossing the Atlantic for ages. These connections seem a natural part of the Windy City's jazz methodology. That said, this meeting of the Norwegian saxophonist Kjetil Møster and the ...
Continue ReadingJÜ with Kjetil Møster: JÜ Meets Møster
by Dan Bilawsky
To experience this collaboration between Norwegian saxophonist Kjetil Møster and Hungarian power trio JÜ is to alternately move through hazy soundscapes and the perilous rapids of progressive music with avant-jazz leanings. JÜ--the trio of guitarist Àdàm Mészáros, bassist Ernö Hock, and drummer Andràs Halmos--deals in spiky tones and mystery-laced minimalism, working an artfully edgy angle with pile driver rhythms and shredding abandon one minute, and letting atmosphere trump firm direction the next. Møster matches their level of ...
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