Nils Petter Molvær
Punkt Artist in Residence 2024
Nils Petter Molvær is perhaps best known for his collaborations with many of the greatest Scandinavian jazz musicians, as well as Sly & Robbie and Bill Laswell. He is one of Norway's most internationally sought-after musicians and has made a clear and defining mark in improvised music in Europe.
Now we are delighted to have him back with a retrospective of the work that defined his career and consolidated role in jazz history. 2023 marked the 25th anniversary of Molvær's groundbreaking debut album Khmer, which was released in 1998 and sold over 250,000 copies worldwide. The work cemented his position as one of the leading voices of the new European jazz movement in the nineties. On the album, massive beats and pounding grooves meet to underpin Molvær's atmospheric trumpet phrasing and solos. The finished product forms a bridge between the typical soundscapes that artists from the ECM label are known for, and what at the time represented a brave new world of trip-hop, drum'n'bass, ambient, techno, industrial, electronica and samples.
Molvær's music stretches out in time and space, and submits to the new technology of the moment to give us constantly new expressions. As an album, Khmer brings the freedom of jazz and the sound potential of pop/rock together, and the celebration of this gem in Norwegian jazz history is not something you want to miss!
Punkt 2024 Artist in Residence: Nils Petter Molvær
Norwegian trumpet player, composer and producer, who takes multiple music styles – jazz, ambient, house, electronic and break beats, as well as elements from hip hop, rock and pop music – and effortlessly reshapes them into unique and dramatic soundscapes of deep intensity.
His remarkable ease in handling the often-contrary conventions of pop, rock, funk, and modern jazz ensured a strong interest in both acoustic and electric music. This chameleon-like ability soon established him as a much sought-after musician in Oslo, which ultimately led to his a colourful and diverse curriculum vitae as a sideman. A trumpet that knows how to capture both the polar ice caps and the burning desert sand, that can portray surging crowds just as well as total solitude, that loses itself but always finds the way back again. Molvaer has his own very individual sound, influenced as much by the poetry of Scandinavian nature as by electronic calculation, and last but not least by colleagues like Miles Davis and Jon Hassell. But more than anything else, Molvaer has himself. Listening to him play, it’s easy to forget that his instrument is a trumpet.
Personnel
Nils Petter Molvær (trumpet)
Eivind Aarset (guitar)
Jan Bang (live sampling)
DJ Strangefruit (turntables)
Audun Erlien (bass)
Torstein Lofthus (drums)
Per Lindvall (drums)
Sven Persson (sound design)
Tord Knudsen (lighting design)
Photo: Roberto Cifarelli