The essence of beauty: The beautiful is that which is compact, simple and clearly expressed and conveyed, but which is rich in interpreted content and communicated implications. This is the mystery of beauty.
The simplex (sine plicatura, not intertwined, homogeneous, without being entangled) in the complex (con plicatura, intertwined, composed), or vice versa if you like. The simplex is easily accessible, easy to experience, while the interpretation creates complex images and impressions that can take a long time to digest.
The Heliosphere is a large chamber for good and beautiful music. Just like the somewhat smaller room at Victoria. The room with great memories, and long stories. Complex conversations. An expectant audience meets a lineup that suggests a band that will be surrounded, surrounded, contained, carried, brought forth by an audience that is experiencing and conversing with it. Just like last time when they were going to release what became the album Vol 5, an album title we almost demanded at the time, the quartet will now also present itself to us in a form and organization that makes the polylogue between four musicians and a many-headed audience.
Chamber Music Exegeses: The best jazz for smaller groups falls naturally under the concept of chamber music. Not only, as author and musician Lucy M. Murray writes in Chamber Music: An Extensive Guide for Listeners, that chamber music is simply “… the music for which the best composers save their best writing”.
No, more than that, far more than that. I have said it and I will say it again: In a letter to his friend Carl Friedrich Zelter, Johann W. von Goethe wrote in November 1829 that chamber music in quartet form was the most understandable music, “… one hears four sensible people conversing with each other, [one] believes that they can gain something from their discourse and learn about its peculiarities”.
Four sensible people have conversations with each other, which entertain each other. One gains something, learns something, from their discussion, and about the peculiarities of [the matter]. A democratic ideal for a form of debate that today seems completely forgotten.
Chamber music like the one Team Hegdal delivers is decent conversations, conversations that are elevated, high-quality, valuable. Conversations that one learns from. A form of conversation that today’s media seems not only to have forgotten, but that they consciously and openly suppress in their pursuit of conflicts, sharpening disagreements.
Why does every political debater today go into a discussion with a goal of winning, of killing the opposition? How did we get there? Where did the political ideal of creating consensus across political divides come from?
If anything, today’s political “leadership”, the details are well considered, in Washington should stand as a strong and red-flag warning of where today’s conflict-oriented and conflict-creating media debates will lead us: To the theater of madness, to the victory of idiocy. The process that has so far ended with the ongoing coup and demolition of a solidly founded democracy, began with the Republican speaker Newt Gingrich in the House of Representatives during the presidency of Bill Clinton. Then an important shift occurred, actively driven by the speaker from Georgia, where he and the GOP – the Republican Party – stifled any attempt at cooperation “across the divide”, across party lines. Political conflict and discord were more important than creating consensus that created a robust policy. Shit in the world, long live Toten. Gingrich has also been an active supporter of Donald Trump since 2015/16. It is perhaps not a coincidence that the first name of this Republican leader of this new political line is the name of a reptile: salamander!
But now we forget all this sadness. Because now is the time for carefree dancing and joy, for what today’s concertmaster and last year’s Buddy winner Eirik Hegdal, today with tenor saxophone and bass clarinet, calls gla’jazz. Victoria becomes a warm and protective chamber where four sensible people talk in two sets. All clarification of the core characteristics of chamber music fits like a knife in a sheath, a hand in a glove, a foot in a trouser, like yin in yang, on Eirik Hegdal’s music and the musical performance of it performed by the quartet Team Hegdal.
The quartet is on the move with a small tour. In January it was Storyville in Molde and Dokkhuset in Trondheim. This week they played in Kongsberg on Wednesday, in Amsterdam on Thursday, before they are here at the National Jazz Stage on Friday for the last concert of the tour. The tour was a 50th birthday present from drummer Gard Nilssen and bassist Ole Morten Vågan, to bandleader Hegdal. It is a bit late, admittedly, it was not yesterday that Hegdal passed this milestone. With the reason being André Roligheten’s ongoing paternity leave, Hegdal, one of Norwegian jazz’s most important inspirers, mentors and culture builders, has brought in trumpeter Eivind Lønning. A slightly different team than before: The shift to a woodwind + a brass creates other musical spaces in the music, other core values. Lønning sparkles in this music. We have said it before, but as is well known, it cannot be said too often: Eirik Hegdal writes really great songs. You are delighted by Hegdal’s music, you are delighted by Team Hegdal’s music. And when Hegdal has written new music for this tour, for this composition, the joy is total.
One of the city’s, country’s, continent’s, and perhaps the world’s, best power plants: Green and well-oiled, sustainable, climate and environmental friendly, purifying, explosively energizing when needed, subdued and cruise-controlled, efficient and smooth progress and gait, at low and high rpm, with a full tank and clean, blood-filled carburetors. Ole Morten Vågan and Gard Nilssen bring with them great and strong memories of when Jon Christensen and Arild Andersen put the world in high gear and rode the “wave” of music. The dynamic elements of music, breath, beat and rhythm, all operated with sensitive and insightful timing. The wave of energy in the music.
First set: The tone and notes for the concert are set from the first pickup phrase, the introduction to a song that Hegdal has called “So unconcerned”, a happy carefree dance that quickly leads to a long and simultaneous sigh of happiness going like a wave through the wreath of audience that envelops the band and the music. Shoulders relax, heart rate lowers and makes a few happy jumps in time with the music, breathing is slow, efficient and profound. It is the best jazz that forms the basis for the quartet, but modernized and sprightly alive. It is gla’jazz, but no old jazz. Horse jazz is far away. Greetings and deep nods to Don Cherry, to Eric Dolphy, to Charlie Parker, to this year’s centenarians – Miles and Trane. Distinctive, but with deep respect and deep, heartfelt knowledge of the traditions.
International and Norwegian, at once. This, dear Frp-ers, is what modern Norwegian culture is, this is what the recipe for a living culture should be: A mixture, a continuously changing, developing mix of musical cultural features from one’s own history and from the history of others, from all over the world. This is how the new Norway grows. This is how the new Norway has always grown, ever since the first hunter got lost across the Skagerak and Kjølen, or came in from the plateau, to what became Norway. The new Norway was created when he looked around and said: “This is my home, here I want to live”.
Ever since then, what is Norwegian culture at any given time has drawn inspiration and drawn in ‘foreign’ elements – immigrants. Hardingfela was once an immigrant. Springaren is not originally Norwegian. They came here as foreigners, but they did not Norwegianize themselves. On the contrary, they brought central elements that created new Norwegian culture. They were integrated into a transmuted, a changed culture. There lies the answer, there lies the truth.
A living Norwegian culture has never been, and will never be, a museum. A museum-like cultivation of culture kills culture, a musealized culture is a dead culture. A living culture cannot be captured, delimited. It is always on its way to another place, to something else. Norwegian culture today is something different than Norwegian culture a year ago, a hundred years ago, in 1350. Norwegian culture in 2050, in 2100, will be something different than today.
Not only is the populist right-wing’s argument ignorant, it is self-contradictory: It kills what it promotes as essential. But more than self-contradictory, it is a logical impossibility, the statement that ‘this is Norwegian culture’ not only kills the culture, it is a real contradictio in adjecto, what is called in English a contradiction in terms. The words do not go together, it is like describing a circle as a square. The overlap in the Venn diagram between the terms is not only empty, it is non-existent.
“Derover”, from ‘over there’, to over her, from you. Daring show, daring dance, and daring whisk. “Calling R.” … have I heard Lønning like that before? Yes. Yes, but in this context the space around the music becomes different. The ball-throwing between Lønning and Hegdal is playful, deeply felt and constantly interesting. Nilssen slams some grooves that make you sit up straight in your chair, playful, but alert. “The Don Thing”, it’s so infinite., infinite, … beautiful. Uncountable, and infinite. Infinite in its infinite potency. Shift, calm, drive, brake, give it gas.
We immerse ourselves in the music, are awakened by the trance with unexpected shifts, follow along. It’s like when I sat in the large hall at the Colosseum cinema many years ago and watched the movie Grand Prix with Steve McQueen in the lead role, on an infinite number of meters of curved screen in front of us. The whole hall leaned over in the turns, tightened up in the braking, and leaned forward and gave full throttle in the acceleration phases.
Accelerando, ritardando, and then rubato. Shake loose. Exhale. Breathe in. Relax. We take a short break, “so you have time to … take a break”. Subtle humor, relaxed calm, great joy.
Second set: Play is never far away when skilled and improvising musicians play. Man spielt wenn man spielt. Yoy play when you play. Tu joues quand tu joues. Ludis, dum ludis. The coincidence has disappeared in Scandinavian, you play when you play. But as Lewis Carroll emphasized with his new word to galumph, play is life itself. Life is a play, play is the young, the somewhat older and the old child’s way of exploring the world. Play is learning. The child’s play is driven by curiosity. By curiosity. The music shows the way.
“Dolphy at lunch”, a humoresque, a reference to the music Dolphy played, while he was Out to Lunch.
Rocking pulse, rocking rolls, bugging beat, chewing time, rushing zones of tones, romping everything. Life itself in play. Galumphing.
Segue to “Blue” – which connects to Charlie Parker’s “Perhaps”. Bird played the theme once, on September 24, 1948 for the Savoy, with Miles Davis, John Lewis, Curley Russell and Max Roach. It was first released on record in 1955, shortly after Bird died.
Join in on a bossa, “A bossa wish,” although I challenge everyone in the room to dance the bossa with these changes. It’s closer to being considered a Latin modern ballet. A jazz ballet from Latinia, It swings fiercely, we’re excited. A reference to “Keith or neat,” the reference is obvious. But it doesn’t short-circuit. The dance continues, the smiles, the twinkles in the eyes, the sympathy in the music around the ring are, if possible, even broader, clearer and stronger than when the conversation between the four sensible people began.
Extra track: “Naive”, and great. You’re not ‘naive’, are you? Yes, you are, and you should be. To be consciously naive is to meet ‘the other’ without suspicion, as an equal, as someone who can teach me something new. To be consciously naive is to build mutual trust, even if you rarely get burned on your fingers, ears, nose and eyes. Nothing is as destructive to new relationships as being met with suspicion. To be accused of being exploitative, a thief, a villain and an abuser.
If you condemn the other as the devil himself, you condemn yourself. This or something similar was written down on parchment by some wise minds about 2000 years ago. Whether someone who wandered around the Roman-occupied areas and who had grown up in what we today call Palestine said such words should go unsaid.
But that doesn’t take away any points from these texts. In the darkness, a monkey also occasionally flashes a flash. Although these princes of darkness who have been allowed to claim the life and statements of this Palestinian rebel as a kind of unchallenged truth, have done everything they can throughout history to counteract this teaching. If the New Testament Jesus Josefsen really existed, then he must be green with a glowing red anger, at how both yesterday’s and today’s princes of darkness use the words attributed to him.
Deliberately naive, bassist naive, but no naive bassist spell. What a quartet, what a music. What possible luck!
So instead of an unlucky day, Friday the 13th appears as a lucky day. The origin of the idea that Friday the thirteenth is an unlucky day is unknown. This meme – in Richard Dawkins’ sense – first appeared in the 19th century. The first documented instance is in 1843, in a short story – Souvenirs de Sicile – written by a Marquis de Salvo and published in the journal Revue de Paris. A father murders his daughter, Donna Margarita, who has promised herself to a man he does not approve of. She plans to run away with her lover, and her father stabs her to death on the day that Don Pietro has promised to take the beautiful woman to the altar, a Friday, December 13 (a real date in 1833!). The author writes:
“[D]on Pietro … trouva le moyen de lui faire parvenir de ses nouvelles, en lui di sant que le vendredi 13 décembre, il l’aurait enlevée du château et menée à l’autel. Ce sont toujours ces vendredis et ces nombres treize qui portent malheur!”
– Don Pedro found a way to bring the news to her, on Friday, December 13, he would have abducted her from the castle and taken her to the altar. It is always these Fridays and the number thirteen that bring misfortune.
The idea is that Fridays are unlucky days, and the number 13 is an unlucky number. Double unlucky. But the truth is that there are no statistics that indicate that this is an unlucky day. Perhaps rather the opposite, through something that is really an expression of a social construction of our common reality, more physically direct than Berger and Luckmann ever imagined: The perception that Friday the 13th is an unlucky day means that many people are extra careful on this day. We must therefore expect that fewer accidents will occur than on other days.
With that, the unlucky day Friday the 13th is the exact opposite: To the extent that happiness is the absence of misfortune, this is a lucky combination. But this is a kind of negative evidence. Now we have more. We can add anecdotal and positive evidence to this: Team Hegdal on a Friday the 13th is a particularly lucky combination. Friday the 13th makes you happy.
