Lina Nyberg: Present
This is the eminent Swedish vocalist Nyberg’s 25th release. It follows her excellent collaboration with the Bohuslän Big Band, for whom she was composer-in-residence in 2022-23 and with whom she cut the expansively conceived The World’s A Stage, released on Prophone Records and reviewed by me.
Reunited here with her regular, superb quintet partners of many a year, Nyberg explores a more intimate range of mood and means as she reflects on archetypal matters of personal identity, the passage of time and the quest for a sense of meaning and belonging in the world.
As usual, the intelligence of Nyberg’s wide-ranging vocal inflections and writing (she contributed all the arrangements as well as the majority of the songs here) brings a fresh, most distinctive – even philosophical – dimension to the poetics of jazz singing. Relish her unforced ability to employ now punchy jazz phrasing (the delicious, diversely swinging Present, Small Smooth Stones and Somewhere Called Home), now ruminative, classically touched yet liquid “speech-song” (Future, Lost And Found, The Good Night and The Past, with the last featuring both reflective scat and emergent, burning rhythmic momentum).
Piano-less chamber jazz of the highest order is delivered through distilled, space-conscious yet most expressive contributions from all participants. Lungkvist has long been one of the most dynamically aware and vibrant improvisers on the Nordic scene and he impresses here on both tenor and bass clarinet. The contributions of Linnea Jonsson (t), Josef Kallerdahl (b) and Peter Danemo (d) are no less central to this surpassing achievement from one of the most distinctive vocalists of our time.
Discography
Future; Present; Small Smooth Stones; Lost And Found; Somewhere Called Home; The Past; The Good Night (38.09)
Nyberg (v, elec); Fredrik Lungkvist (ts, bcl); Linnea Jonsson (t); Josef Kallerdahl (b); Peter Danemo (d). Stockholm, 13 May 2006.
Hoob CD141
Space: London Concert
Space is an all-female Swedish improvising trio with Lisa Ullén (p), Elsa Bergman (b) and Anna Lund (d) sharing compositional credits for all five pieces in this 2023 concert from London’s Cafe Oto. While the recording quality is excellent throughout, strangely, not a single second of applause is to be heard.
This can’t be to do with the quality of the music. A review of the concert deemed Ullén “easily the most singular pianist in Sweden right now” – a characterisation I would think Susanna Lindeborg and Bobo Stenson might care to query as much as Jan Lundgren and Jacob Karlzon – and her dynamically aware companions here are top-class. They contribute both multi-planed, often thunderous power and welcome finesse to many a cascade of shape-shifting interplay in the classic free-jazz manner. Sample Lund’s potent solo introductory figures on Crystal 2 or the reflective intimacy of both Ullén’s pianism and Bergman’s arco lines in some sustained passages of lyrical restraint within the near 13 minutes of Envoi.
However, restraint is hardly the quality which characterises this music overall. If you are after full-force improvisation in the post-Cecil Taylor manner, complemented by telling passages of limpid introspection, don’t hesitate. And you can catch Space live in England again this month, with concerts on the 25th and 26th in (respectively) Manchester and London.
Discography
Crystal 1; Crystal 2; Between; Envoi; Stone (43.28)
Lisa Ullén (p); Elsa Bergman (b); Anna Lund (d). London, 25 September 2023.
Fönstret – 20c
