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Archive for Johannes Cornell

... is a jazz critic for Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter and has also hosted several shows on national radio broadcaster Sveriges Radio.

Some shameless promotion for one great artist

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Dagens Nyheter, the daily I write for, has an annual cultural prize that is given to a prominent Swedish person in art, literature, music, film, or performing arts such as dance and theater. Five candidates — one from each field — are nominated. The winner is a joint decision between the jury and the readers who vote, but if you ask me, it’s not so much about who wins.

More important is the public attention this “contest” brings all of the nominees, and this year I got my guy Fredrik Ljungkvist nominated in the music category. A brilliant saxophone and clarinet player, Ljungkvist was the first jazz musician ever to be up for the prize.


Fredrik Ljungkvist. Photo: Evelyne Brooymans/Rikskonserter

Now, it’s not entirely uncomplicated for a critic to push for a candidate for a prize or a scholarship. Normally you’re supposed to be loyal only to the art form itself and not lend yourself to promotion of a single artist. Of course this highly held journalistic principle had to go out the window, and I was okay with that.

Ljungkvist really is a great musician — I’d say maybe one of the top five or six jazz saxophonists in the world today. The fame he has achieved has not come by playing easy listening to the masses, like Kenny G, nor has he tried to please jazz fans by sounding like one of the all-time saxophone heroes like John Coltrane or Sonny Rollins.

Nope, Ljungkvist never fakes it like that. He is a stunning virtuoso, fully capable of imitating Coltrane or anyone else for that matter. But instead of playing it safe by surfing on what’s already been done, this guy constantly pushes himself to go further and deeper. He blends straight-ahead post-bop with free jazz and European improvisational music. Ljungkvist lets his composing take him wherever he feels like going, without ever being dogmatic or protective of any given style.

Many people doing the same would come across as eclectic and indistinct. Not Ljungkvist. Instead he becomes one with his instruments, creating out of his ideas and skills some of the most compelling and personal jazz that has ever come out of Sweden — or even Europe.

So, here I go promoting again — still feeling okay about it. In my opinion Ljungkvist needs to be heard, for the sake of pure artistry.

But also for economic reasons. Sure, the guy makes a living, but there are very small margins playing this kind of music. We’ve got government founding of the arts in Sweden, but it’s not enough by a long shot, and besides there are very few artists over here that wouldn’t rather earn enough by themselves and be independent of the state.

Ljungkvist, if anybody, surely deserves to. Here is a performance of his with the Swedish-Norwegian band Atomic. If you want to find out more about his band Yun Kan 5, click here.

Johannes Cornell

May 10, 2010

Swedish jazz goes Clint Eastwood

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Oddjob. Photo: Sanna Lindberg/ACT

In the March issue of The New Yorker magazine, there’s a feature on Clint Eastwood following the actor’s career from when he was a contract player for Universal Studios in the 50’s, via the westerns that he made with Sergio Leone in the 60’s and the just as tough Dirty Harry films in the 70’s, to his later and much more diverse work both as an actor and director in the 80’s, 90’s and today.

So what does Clint Eastwood have to do with Swedish music? Well, to begin with, he’s had a lot to do with music. He made the melancholic Honkytonk Man in which he plays a country singer. A well-known jazz aficionado, he also directed the often underestimated Bird about saxophone legend Charlie Parker. Today, his son Kyle Eastwood is a respected jazz bassist.

The connection with Swedish music would have been very unlikely in the 60’s, 70’s and the first half of the 80’s. Back then, Eastwood was regarded as politically incorrect and, to the most radical Swedish rock and jazz musicians, almost semi-fascist. It was ridiculous, of course. But at the time much of the Swedish music scene was sort of hijacked for political purposes, with the most dogmatic spokesmen blaming the widely despised U.S foreign policy on almost anything American.

It is no secret that this phenomenon had a renaissance during George W. Bush’s two terms as president, but by then the public image of Clint Eastwood in Sweden had long changed. Nowadays viewed as a genuine good guy, Eastwood is just as associated with the gentler characters he portrayed in The Bridges of Madison County and Million Dollar Baby.

Earlier this year, it was time for it to happen — a Swedish jazz band naming a album of theirs Clint. On this their latest album, Oddjob — like the bad guy in the James Bond movie Goldfinger, adding yet another film reference to the matter — play, in their own arrangements, soundtracks from films such as The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, Magnum Force and Pale Rider, by film composer Ennio Morricone among others.

Note that most of the stuff is from some of Eastwood’s most violent films. This is really what makes the point: Eastwood is no longer a political hot potato, far from it. With his sympathetic private persona and his seeming ability to just get better and better at what he does, it has become completely uncontroversial for any given jazz band to explore the interesting aesthetics of his bloodstained early work.

Johannes Cornell

April 20, 2010

Making music outside the mainstream

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In 2000, Swedish saxophone player Jonas Kullhammar started his own record label, naming it Moserobie after a club he had been involved in at a classic music venue in Stockholm called Mosebacke Etablissement. At the time word was already out about Kullhammar’s strong playing, and he would hardly have had any problems getting signed by an established Swedish jazz label hade he wanted to. But besides being a gifted musician successfully launching his own band, Kullhammar turned out to be a great entrepreneur, quickly signing several other young, rising musicians to his label.

This example of how to run your own music career was not the first in Swedish jazz  (drummer Fredrik Norén’s label Mirrors was a notable forerunner) but Kullhammar’s initiative was very well-timed and has since been followed by many other musicians through out the country. The important aspect is that it is not only about handling the business, but also about being in charge of how to get the creativity across to people.

Jonas Kullhammar working that tenor saxophone. Photo: www.kulhammar.com

Another interesting parallel is between Swedish jazz and metal. With few exceptions Swedish metal and hard rock bands have been pretty much ignored by the music industry mainstream. On the other hand, they have benefited from a global network of record companies, distributors, festival organizations, concert arrangers and fanzines devoted to heavy rock.

Now that the record industry is down on its knees, there are metal bands in Sweden who still sell records and tour extensively. In Flames, Sweden’s biggest metal group, has sold over two million records to date and are signed to German metal label Nuclear Blast. Entombed, founded in 1990 and one of the pioneers in Scandinavian death metal, are still out there touring the world. This month alone, yet another major band, Opeth, has played at the Bataclan in Paris, Royal Albert Hall in London, Terminal 5 in New York and The Wiltern in Los Angeles.


Opeth front man Mikael Åkerfeldt live in 2009. Photo: Mick Thornton

They may be worlds apart in many respects, but metal and jazz do have some stuff in common. Both are very live-oriented genres, and their fans are more likely to buy entire albums rather than downloading single tunes on the Internet. Metal has obviously outgrown jazz in many ways, so maybe jazz musicians could learn one or two things from their leather-clad counterparts.

Here are some more independent Swedish jazz labels that have been important to the scene: Apart Records, Found You Recordings, Hoob Records, Kopasetic, Stockholm Jazz Records.

Johannes Cornell

April 19, 2010

A Swedish samba

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My sister has a bossa nova band in which I play the bass. The band has mostly been giving concerts at hospitals and homes for old people. Not very glamorous gigs, but rewarding in the sense that we might bring some light and joy into the lives of people who don’t necessarily have that much fun.

The interesting thing about the band, however, is not where it performs — but what. It’s a bossa band, obviously, but with a special twist. My sister doesn’t sing in Portuguese or Spanish or English, as would be natural playing this kind of music. Instead she sings in Swedish. Some songs she’s been translating into Swedish, others are Swedish songs to begin with, but have been rhythmically re-casted as bossanovas.

When playing we are in fact staging a minor cultural clash, either bringing smiles to the old people’s faces or scaring them half dead. Most of the time, I don’t think we shorten their lives much at all.

My sister does not command them to jump up and dance, which in some cases would be nothing short of miracle anyway. But while singing in Swedish and presenting to these folks songs that they can trace and recognize, she invites them into a sometimes rather exotic mix of musical elements.

As most bands, we sometimes give concerts that are not great but merely okay. But at almost any given occasion we do succeed in making at least some people confront and think about what they are hearing. Recognition, resemblance, memories or even indignation is all pretty powerful stuff, bringing people out of their mind frames and away from daily routines.

Sometimes, when we’re really cookin’, we send some of these old Swedish men and women on an inner journey that — as a sweet lady once told us after the show — makes them feel Swedish as ever, but also in touch with the world and far from too old to dance. It’s a good thing.

Today, most Swedish bands playing Latin music stick to the traditional languages. I have already written about the Swedish timba band Calle Real, who sing in Spanish. Other people active on the vital Latin music scene in Sweden are Stockholm-based Brazilian Simone Moreno, who sings in Portuguese, and saxophonist Magnus Lindgren, whose group Batucada Jazz mixes Portuguese with English.

Magnus Lindgren, fronting his Batucada Jazz band. Photo: Fredrik Jonsson

Magnus Lindgren, fronting his Batucada Jazz band. Photo: Fredrik Jonsson

Back in the 60’s, however, singing Latin music in Swedish was regarded as kind of hip, and it is in part this tradition that my sister is keeping alive. Here are some pretty cool examples from that era:

Lill Lindfors singing “Hör min samba”, a Swedish translation of the famous song “Mas que nada”.

Laila Kinnunen singing “Stänk av dissonans”, Swedish version of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Desafinado”.

Anita Lindblom sings “Beatles Bossa Nova” in 1964, melody and chords clearly imported from Jobim’s “The Girl from Ipanema”.

Johannes Cornell

April 16, 2010

Norrland minus the warbling

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This winter, a colleague of mine and I made a radio interview with Johan Norberg, a well-known and much-respected Swedish guitar player covering both jazz and rock.

In the late 80’s, Norberg almost had to give up his career due to a neurologic disorder affecting the dexterity in both his hands. The battle against the disease seemed lost, but having little else to do at the time Norberg started to experiment with alternative guitar techniques much the same way French jazz manouche pioneer Django Reinhardt did in the late 20’s.

In 1994 Norberg played on a record by Swedish singer Stina Nordenstam, who is somewhat of cult singer in modern pop. With her tender, sometimes hardly hearable voice and a notorious shyness, Nordenstam turned out to be a perfect creative match for Norberg. In part by working with her, he got his new low-key style together and more or less reinvented himself as a musician.


Johan Norberg and Jonas Knutsson. Photo: Tobias Fröberg/ACT

Today, Norbergs days as a fast-playing guitar slinger are long gone. Instead he has built a new following playing almost exclusively music that he has part in writing. Norberg and saxophone player Jonas Knutsson together form the duo Norrland — “Northland” in English, also the name of the northern part of Sweden where both men are from.

But Norrland is huge, with several provinces and different local traditions to go with them. In their composing for the duo, Norberg and Knutsson borrow a lot from Swedish folk music, but not so much from the famous “warbly” styles associated with the primary Swedish folk music province Dalarna. Instead the duo turns to the just as beautiful but harsher folk music of the region Västerbotten, where people used to be poor and hard-working, having – as Norberg humorously put it when we interviewed him – no time for adding warbles to their melodies.

Anyone interested in what could be described as Swedish equivalent to blues should check up this duo.

Johannes Cornell

April 14, 2010