Life changes. Feelings change. Music changes. Sometimes, you reach a turning point of some kind. Whenever this happens, the story of your life depends on where you begin and end the chapters.
Are things changing for the better or for the worse, or both, or neither? We might not know until we see everything in retrospect, and even then we might not be quite sure. But in the end, these turning points define our stories.
Recorded in just one day this music tries to catch an emotion that was fleeting in the air. It came about both with ease and through struggle. At the end we’re left with fragments of all the feelings, thoughts and experiences it’s given us, and after a while it becomes a memory.
“…this album will be surprising for those of you who are not yet familiar with this artist; for others, it is a highly anticipated masterpiece. … Adam Forkelid is the perfect musical synthesis between Joe Zawinul regarding his solo career as a pianist and Wayne Shorter; like them, he possesses an immense musical culture and stands as a visionary … We receive a lot of very good albums from pianists and composers; as far as Europe is concerned, Adam Forkelid is well above his peers, offering us here an album as useful for our intellect as it is “indispensable.”
“Adam Forkelid’s jazz has no boundaries and does not see or will see a date. Once again, partly due to the choice of an acoustic configuration that brings a groove to each track, which generally is the work of American artists, what sets him apart is his way of writing music, of thinking about it, which makes him unique.
We receive a lot of very good albums from pianists and composers; as far as Europe is concerned, Adam Forkelid is well above his peers, offering us here an album as useful for our intellect as it is “indispensable.”
The music, composed by Adam, weaves together a variety of influences, with features from everything from Satie and Chopin, via Chick Corea and Bill Frisell, to Weather Report and Brazilian music. The result is an emotional and varied music, with a large and own group sound.
Since his debut with the album “Cirkel” in 2005, Adam has been one of the country’s most prominent pianists and composers and part of groups such as Lekverk, Soundscape Orchestra, PACE, Georg Riedel Secret Song, Svante Söderqvist Trio and Norrbotten Big Band, but is also heard in international contexts.
I love that my band took this so seriously and are so incredibly fast in making this music sound complete. We rehearsed only a couple of times before the recording and we recorded all of it in one day. Thanks to their great expertise and focus on always making the best possible music, we made this music playable in a very short time. At the moment I am working on new music for some other projects I have going on. I’ve played with Daniel (drums) and Niklas (bass) for many years now in different circumstances, and actually already had played trio with them from time to time, but that never got recorded. Then we had a gig where I wanted to try and expand the trio with some guests. Carl I met through a mutual musician friend a few years earlier and from the first time we played there was an instantaneous connection; we have a phrasing that’s basically the same and chord structures that don’t interfere with each other, event though we have never talked about theses things. And when he joined the trio, everything fell into place and the band was formed,- an interview with us said Adam Forkelid.
Pianist Adam Forkelid creates original ideas with his compositions. Adam Forkelid’s musical agenda goes back a good twenty years, and although the Swedish pianist has worked with artists such as Nils Landgren, Magnus Öström, Pedro Martins, Louis Cole and Viktoria Tolstoy and his 2021 album “1st Movement” was praised in Sweden as an outstanding jazz work, he is still worth discovering in this country.
One may be skeptical as to whether his fame will increase with “Turning Point”. There is a chance with this release. It would certainly be deserved. Because the cross-genre approach of the quartet with piano, guitar, bass and drums is convincing throughout the entire duration. It begins with the pulsating jazz in the opening title song, which, however, already goes beyond its niche existence thanks to the rock-affine guitar solo. Forkelid and his fellow musicians manage to seamlessly combine jazz, late classical music and rock without stumbling.
The band acts elegantly, smoothly and powerfully. With occasional and neatly balanced greetings from Erik Satie (“The Space Between”), Bill Frisell and Pat Metheny. A prime example is “No Worries”, with its extroverted road movie atmosphere, the pointed drums, a swinging guitar, a narrative bass and Forkelid’s driving but never hectic piano playing.
The gentler night pieces remain melodically and rhythmically light-footed, do not lose themselves in rippling dalliances; the faster songs have a lot of punch without losing their dexterity and feeling. Barbs are well camouflaged and provide a certain trick. Thoughtful pieces like “The Old House”, which begins with an atmospheric dialogue between piano and bass before guitar and caressed drums join in, bubble out of the speakers as touching as they are intense. An exciting album with no lulls.
We recommend that you definitely buy this CD and enjoy…
1 Turning Point (6:31)
2 Strive (5:27)
3 The Space Between (4:03)
4 No Man’s Land (5:59)
5 Moving On (7:10)
6 The Old House (3:44)
7 No Worries (4:25)
8 Fragments (3:38)
Adam Forkelid, piano
Carl Mörner Ringström, guitar
Niklas Fernqvist, double bass
Daniel Fredriksson, drums
