GEIR LYSNE ENSEMBLE

You don't find Norwegian composer Geir Lysne (appositely pronounced "listen") in that many reference sources. Yet for all Lysne's classical leanings, and use of soloists who serve the orchestra and the stories rather than themselves, he's comparable enough to Gil Evans, Carla Bley, George Russell or Maria Schneider to be fascinating to jazz audiences and beyond. This set speculates on fellow-Norwegian Edvard Grieg's view of the world if he were reborn as a 21st-century multi-genre composer. Lysne's music is far more trans-European than the stereotype of Norwegian jazz understatement - the evidence is there from the off, when electronic Jew's harp sounds mingle with distant trombones, and warm Gil Evans-like brass melodies swell under vocal chants, then turn into an intensifying Moorish whirl. Slow flute sketches are picked up by singers or a tenor sax and then get funky; a poem is intoned over ghostly metallic sounds; a saxophone or read more...