Jaga Jazzist

Bio

Jaga Jazzist are an experimental jazz group created in Norway, in Tønsberg, in 1994 by brothers Lars and Martin Horntveth, and multi-instrumentalist as well as composer Ivar Christian Johansen, Known as Ravi.

Their first album was Jævla Jazzist Grete Stitz published in 1996, which immediately expressed the musical soul of the group which blends jazz with electronic, rock, and rap music.

In 2001, however, Jaga Jazzist started becoming famous thanks to their album A Livingroom Hush, which was distributed internationally and was nominated Album of The Year by BBC’s listeners.

After the publication of The Stix in 2003, in which electronic sounds took over, Jaga Jazzist experienced rock music in the album What We Must (2005) and then decided to take a break from recordings and touring.

In 2010 the group came back with One-Armed Bandit and with the live album Live with Britten Sinfonia. The latter is a more structured and designed record in which Jaga Jazzist played together with Britten Sinfonia – a 25-member orchestra- to create a collection of tracks in which orchestral harmonies are perfectly blended with jazz improvisations.

In 2015, Jaga Jazzist published Starfire, a suite of tracks that took inspiration from stars’ constellations and the way they vary all across the globe. The album was born from the sensations Lars Horntveth experienced when he moved from Norway to Los Angeles. The mixture of genres in the extremely experimental songs was what made Starfire the most appreciated Jaga Jazzist’s album.

In November 2016 Jaga Jazzist performed in Italy for six concerts in Milan (Santeria Social Club), Rome (Monk Club), Turin (Teatro Superga Nichelino), Ravenna (Bronson Club), Brescia (Latteria Molloy) and Genoa (Teatro La Claque).

In 2020 the Norwegian group released their latest work Pyramid, composed of four long compositions recorded in two weeks. OndaRock said about the album: «All over the album, the band’s attention is focused on the creation of an emotional landscape, luminous, bright, idyllic and artificial. The crystalline tones of the guitar, together with the vibraphone, the choirs, the synthetic pads […] come together […] in sci-fi dreams that time melts like snow under the sun, leaving the listener with just their imaginative impetus and their intangible nostalgia».

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