As an improvising musician, Jan Garbarek has said that he seeks to make his playing\u00a0\u201cfit the tone, texture and temperament of the music. It\u2019s about finding a common language.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0The quest to explore that language has ranged widely across time and space, from the folk songs of his native Norway to improvisations around medieval polyphony and the music of the Indian subcontinent and Middle East, as well as jazz. In the course of these musical journeys, the intensely focused sounds of his tenor and soprano saxophones have become among the most instantly recognizable and haunting in contemporary music.\u00a0
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Garbarek was born in Mysen, Norway in 1947. His family later moved to Oslo and, at the age of 14, Garbarek first heard John Coltrane on the radio, which inspired him to take up the saxophone. Dexter Gordon, then a frequent visitor to Norway, also made a deep impression.\u00a0
In 1962 Garbarek won a competition for amateur jazz players and for the rest of the decade worked regularly in Norway, usually as a leader, but he also spent four years with jazz composer and theorist George Russell, who would later describe him as\u00a0\u201cthe most original voice in European jazz since Django Reinhardt\u201d. In 1969, ECM founder Manfred Eicher asked Garbarek to join the roster of his new record label.
Garbarek\u2019s first ECM album was\u00a0Afric Pepperbird<\/em>. \u00a0\u201cAfter we recorded it we knew we had something special,\u201d\u00a0Eicher remembered. It was to be the first step in one of ECM\u2019s most distinguished recording careers.\u00a0
Jan Garbarek rose to international fame in the mid-1970s playing with Keith Jarrett’s European Quartet, which released the albums\u00a0Belonging<\/em>,\u00a0My Song<\/em>\u00a0and the live recordings\u00a0Personal Mountains<\/em>,\u00a0Nude Ants<\/em>, and\u00a0Sleeper<\/em>. Such collaborations, in the words of Jarrett\u2019s biographer, Ian Carr, took\u00a0\u201cthe art of classic jazz to its highest pinnacle\u201d.\u00a0
Triptykon<\/em>\u00a0(1972) was the first recording on which Garbarek used a Norwegian folk song in his playing, a direction in which he had been encouraged by American trumpeter Don Cherry.\u00a0\u201cWhether I like it or not,\u201d\u00a0Garbarek told one writer,\u00a0\u201cI am locked into a certain vocabulary or phraseology which is linked to Norwegian folk music.\u201d\u00a0
In 1979, Garbarek recorded\u00a0Photo with Blue Sky,<\/em>\u00a0the first of a series of albums with the Jan Garbarek Group, a regular touring band whose line-up would evolve over the decades. It was not until 2007 that they recorded a live album, however, the double CD,\u00a0Dresden<\/em>. As the\u00a0Guardian<\/em>\u00a0wrote of the group on their 2007 tour:\u00a0\u201cThe contrast between an intense jamming sound and the songlike simplicity of the tunes is always Garbarek\u2019s magic mix, but this version of the band has an exhilarating intensity.\u201d\u00a0
Officium<\/em>, one of the most significant recordings of Garbarek\u2019s career\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and in the history of ECM\u00a0\u2013\u00a0was made in 1993 in St Gerold monastery in Austria with the Hilliard Ensemble. Garbarek\u2019s sax\u00a0\u2013\u00a0a\u00a0\u201cfifth voice\u201d\u00a0\u2013\u00a0weaves soaring, swooping lines around the polyphony of the vocal quartet, creating effects that are as entrancing as they are unexpected. In 1999 came a sequel,\u00a0Mnemosyne<\/em>, which ranged further across time in its musical material, and\u00a0Officum Novum<\/em>\u00a0explored the crossroads between east and west, with particular focus on the music of Armenia.\u00a0
Garbarek\u2019s restless musical imagination, so evident in his Hilliard collaborations and countless other projects over the years, keeps driving him forward. Of his musical journey he says:\u00a0\u201cIt never really stands still. Not at any point in time can you say,\u00a0\u2018Now I reached something.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":8515,"menu_order":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false},"class_list":["post-8506","artisti","type-artisti","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n