As an improvising musician, Jan Garbarek has said that he seeks to make his playing “fit the tone, texture and temperament of the music. It’s about finding a common language.” The 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.
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.
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 “the 
most original voice in European jazz since Django Reinhardt”. In 1969, ECM founder Manfred Eicher asked Garbarek to join the roster of his new record label. Garbarek’s first ECM album was Afric Pepperbird. “After we recorded it we knew we had something special,” Eicher remembered. It was to be the first step in one of ECM’s most distinguished recording careers.
Jan Garbarek rose to international fame in the mid-1970s playing with Keith Jarrett’s European Quartet, which released the albums Belonging, My Song and the live recordings Personal Mountains, Nude Ants, and Sleeper. Such collaborations, in the words of Jarrett’s biographer, Ian Carr, took “the art of classic jazz to its highest pinnacle”.
Triptykon (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. “Whether I like it or not,” Garbarek told one writer, “I am locked into a certain vocabulary or phraseology which is linked to Norwegian folk music.”
In 1979, Garbarek recorded Photo with Blue Sky, the 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, Dresden. As the Guardian wrote of the group on their 2007 tour: “The contrast between an intense jamming sound and the songlike simplicity of the tunes is always Garbarek’s magic mix, but this version of the band has an exhilarating intensity.”
Officium, one of the most significant recordings of Garbarek’s career – and in the history of ECM – was made in 1993 in St Gerold monastery in Austria with the Hilliard Ensemble. Garbarek’s sax – a “fifth voice” – weaves 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, Mnemosyne, which ranged further across time in its musical material, and Officum Novum explored the crossroads between east and west, with particular focus on the music of Armenia.
Garbarek’s 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: “It never really stands still. Not at any point in time can you say, ‘Now I reached something.’” (by ecm.com)
And yes, Jan Gabarek ist still active … alive and well. So listen to his brilliant concert, recorded at the Gezziamoci Festival 2019 in Matera/Italy.
This show was broadcasted by an Italian TV-Station (this video is included in my file) and so we have a brilliant soundboard recording.
In keeping with the theme of bringing cultures together, various concerts featuring international musicians will take place as part of the Materadio programming. An especial highlight promises to be the performance of Norwegian jazz saxophonist Jan Garbarek, who will be joined on stage by another world-class musician, Indian percussionist Trilok Gurtu. (press release)
Indeed: another nearly perfect perfomance by one the greatest jazz musician of our time !
Enjoy this rarity !
Personnel:
Rainer Brüninghaus (keyboards)
Yuri Daniel (bass)
Jan Garbarek (saxophone, flute)
Trilok Gurtu (drums, percussion, tablas, vocals)
Tracklist:
01. Opening (unknown) 2.32
02. Molde Canticle (Garbarek) 16.55
03. Untitled (unknown) 5.27
04. Hot Æ Dæ Fe Noko Vesolt Væ (Jutulen Og Stolt Øli) (Garbarek) 10.34
05. Matera Five (Brüninghaus/Daniel/Garvarek/Gurtu) 5.01
06 Matera Six (Brüninghaus/Daniel/Garvarek/Gurtu) 11.36
07 Matera Seven (Brüninghaus/Daniel/Garvarek/Gurtu) 7.20
08 Rainer Solo (Brüninghaus) 8.07
09 All Those Born With Wings (5th Piece) (Garbarek) 6.20
10. Trilok Solo (Gurtu) 12.12
11. Improvisation (Brüninghaus/Daniel/Garvarek/Gurtu) 9.57
12. Had To Cry Today (Winwood) 7.10
For a band destined to be so influential, led by a pianist who is certainly not shy of the recording process, Keith Jarrett’s so-called European quartet was parlously under-documented.
Photo with Blue Sky, White Cloud, Wires, Windows and a Red Roof is an album by Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek, released in 1979 on the ECM label and performed by Garbarek, John Taylor, Bill Connors, Eberhard Weber and Jon Christensen.
Witchi-Tai-To is an album by the Jan Garbarek-Bobo Stenson Quartet released on the ECM label and performed by Garbarek, Stenson, Palle Danielsson, and Jon Christensen.
It has been six years since saxophonist/composer Jan Garbarek issued a new recording under his own name. For In Praise of Dreams Garbarek enlisted violist Kim Kashkashian and frequent collaborator Manu Katché on drums. Garbarek, who composed the album’s 11 selections, plays saxophones as well as a host of keyboards and percussion, while Katché plays acoustic and electronic drums along with Kashkashian’s viola. In many ways this is the most radical recording that Garbarek has ever issued, but not because it’s outside — quite the opposite. This is easily the warmest, most accessible outing Garbarek has ever issued because though there are no vocals, Garbarek has clearly written “songs” on this set, with identifiable structures that are followed almost throughout. Though he is no stranger to the form, having employed it almost continually for the last 20 years, he has never engaged it so thoroughly and completely. Previously, he has engaged improvisation to get song to the breaking point and move it somewhere else. Here it is always present; surprise happens inside the formal frameworks of these compositions. Beautiful, soulful lines underscore and recontextualize the saxophonist’s trademark Nordic iciness of tone on the opener, “As Seen from Above,” with its spiraling soprano, lush keyboards, and hypnotic loops.
Jan Garbarek
Jan Garbarek had studied with the great American composer George Russell, and had previously appeared on Russell’s venture into jazz-rock, Electronic Sonata for Souls Loved By Nature. Whereas his teacher’s usage of rock rhythms in an avant jazz context often came off as rather clunky, for Garbarek and his guitarist, Terje Rypdal, formerly a member of the popular Norwegian band the Vanguards, such a melding was more second nature. The Esoteric Circle, the first album by their band of the same name (hey, this was still the ’60s after all), is a highly successful and enjoyable effort, one that can stand comfortably with work being done at that time by Tony Williams or John McLaughlin. Garbarek’s compositions range from deeply felt homages to Coltrane (“Traneflight” and “Nefertite”) to rocking jams like “Rabalder,” where Rypdal gets to showcase his considerable chops. In fact, some of these themes were used by Russell in his aforementioned work. Garbarek’s own playing, here entirely on tenor, come largely out of Albert Ayler as well as Coltrane, and his general attack is much more raw and aggressive than the style for which he would eventually become more widely known through his recordings for ECM. Listeners who enjoy his first several albums for that label (from Afric Pepperbird to Witchi-Tai-To) will find much to savor here. (by Brian Olewnick)
Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek’s icy tone and liberal use of space and long tones has long been perfect for the ECM sound and, as a result, he is on many recordings for that label, both as a leader and as a sideman. He had won a competition for amateur jazz players back in 1962, leading to his first gigs. Garbarek worked steadily in Norway throughout the remainder of the ’60s, usually as a leader but also for four years with George Russell (who was in Scandinavia for a long stretch). Garbarek began recording for ECM in the early ’70s and, although he had opportunities to play with Chick Corea and Don Cherry, his association with Keith Jarrett’s European quartet in the mid-’70s made him famous, resulting in the classic recordings My Song and Belonging. In the ’80s, Garbarek’s groups included bassist Eberhard Weber and at various times, guitarists Bill Frisell and David Torn. Garbarek, whose sound has remained virtually unchanged since the ’70s, collaborated with the Hilliard Ensemble in 1993 (a vocal quartet singing Renaissance music) and the result was a surprisingly popular recording. Visible World followed in 1995, and four years later he resurfaced with Rites. In April of 1999, Garbarek and the Hilliard Ensemble returned with Mnemosyne. He issued In Praise of Dreams in 2004, and finally released his first live album as a leader, Dresden, in 2009. In 2012, ECM released the live archival recording Magico: Carta de Amor, by the Magico trio that also included guitarist Egberto Gismonti and bassist Charlie Haden. ( by Scott Yanow)
