The intro to your excellent album, Modor, had me skipping around the house while cleaning up after my two-year-old. The flute melodies skitter and bounce playfully, but with urgency—a conversationalist who’s eager to share the news of the day; a masterful storyteller who stumbled into the pub and who, even on his worst day, can spin yarns that tangle even the most talented puzzlers. I was excitedly chatting with my son who, in the midst of his terrible twos, is eager to destroy everything he sees. I shared tales with him about his daddy at an early age, and the mischief that I engaged in. Was it a cautionary tale? Who knows. The interplay between the instrumentation elevated the performances to a special level beyond your typical jazz record, but instead, into a vibrant auditory portrait, whose lush expressions of passion ooze between the deft flourishing, melodic runs, and expressions: the perfect accompaniment to my ridiculous stories that captured his attention.
Taking a step back before I wax too poetic over your excellent work, can you please describe the meaning behind the title and the motivation to create your record, Modor?
Moder is a Norwegian word for mother. The title came quite late in the process, but I think it captures the journey and the music itself well. There are two reasons for that, the first and most direct is that I myself became a mother right at the beginning of making the album. The second is that I’ve had a kind of revelation along the way when it comes to the flute. I am classically trained at my core and fell hard and deeply into the jazz world during my youth. My work has been about exploring and experimenting musically, often with a quite broad frame of reference. Maybe partly because the flute hasn’t always had that strong a presence in the modern jazz scene, and it has felt lonely at times. But it has slowly but surely dawned on me that the flute is everywhere, like a primal instrument. Alongside the shepherds up in the mountains, in ornate baroque chambers, charming snakes, floating across hierarchies and genre boundaries all over the world. There is something very inspiring about that, which I have tried to bring into the album. The flute is often seen as cute and sweet-sounding, and that’s fine, but it doesn’t have to be. I wanted to make something more fierce, organic, sometimes fragile, and sometimes not beautiful at all.
Who is Joyce? What do they want? How many times have we met them before? The melodies echo something of a bustling sentiment: we’re moving fast, onward, to somewhere beyond the beyond. All is well, so long as we are traveling together with Joyce, but who are they? The instrumentation insists and hustles, “Don’t delay, keep moving; otherwise, you’ll miss the moment.” What moment is this? I don’t know. My fellow travelers push on my back as we move up a dangerous cliffside. We’re stuck in a montage of quick snapshots of our journey: we’re sharing food and drink, feet dangling over the side of a cliff; one traveler nearly slips down the mountain, but another catches them before they fall over the cliffside. There are moments of peril with the triplet phrasing interspersed between the determined melodies—the interplay between the bass and drums is fantastic. They’re in lockstep with each other, but not too stiff, as the groove still feels like human feet hurrying downhill towards their end destination.
I’ll ask again: Who is Joyce? This is one of my favorite tracks on the record. I’d love to hear more context behind its creation and inspiration.
Yes, this is one of my favorites too! During the period I wrote it, I had been asked to play a one-off gig with a Brazilian musician at a festival outside Oslo. It was with Joyce Moreno, and we played her music, especially from her Natureza album. There was something very poetic, yet powerful and fast-paced about the music and Moreno herself. An inspiring meeting for me! And I think that inspiration and vibe definitely rubbed off on this song, which is why it is called Meeting Joyce.
Each track creates vivid imagery for me. I see flowers, trees, bustling streams, and, for some reason, stark mountains. There’s a wildness and freedom to the instrumentation. The performances feel grounded together by a prominent, infectious rhythmic pulse; that said, the experimentation in the performances and soundplay with the electronics create these unique bubbles of experimentation that are exploratory and soul-searching. Perhaps this is what Oslo, Norway, is like? I’ve never been, but I have friends who regularly travel there. I understand Oslo is home to some of the happiest people on earth.
How would you say your home enabled or shaped your trio’s creativity behind the record?
Being in nature and identifying as a nature person is a big part of Norwegian culture in general. And I think the Scandinavian modern jazz sound is very much influenced by nature and Norwegian folk music. I can relate to that. Beautiful nature can inspire you to make beautiful music, right? But nature can also be chaotic, wild and merciless. I think a lot about organic chaos, and trying to organize and navigate through it. Sometimes not just picking the perfect sounds, but letting the noise from the breath or clicking sounds become a part of the piece.
Tretakt is another showstopper; the building intensity and rhythms create a tension that’s cut abruptly short, and then followed by plodding, woozy, stretched synthesized tones that drift and fade between the organic instrumentation like an eel moving between the seaweed in search of its next meal. The distortion and cacophony of the recording and mixing lend themselves to this derailed sensation that melts the mind. I recommend listening to this track as you walk home on a rainy day—the world will dissolve around you to match the track’s disintegrating progression; it’s a marvelous pairing of experiences.
What is your process for developing and executing the ideas that become these songs? What are the moments that you anticipate versus improvise, and how do you stay aligned with the other performers as the songs enter these more chaotic moments?
All the pieces have started with me playing the flute, then building outwards from there. It is a very flute-centered album. Joel and Øystein, who play with me in the trio, are excellent musicians, and their voice has shaped the music a lot. As an improvising musician it is important to me that the music is flexible enough to feel fresh for a long time, and that it can be bent in different directions when played live. Playing music that enters more abstract territory, like in Tretakt, is important to me because it opens up for music that I wouldn’t write myself. And finding the path through the music together as a trio creates an important momentum and flow. You have to feel that everything can fall apart sometimes, it is a part of the struggle and the joy of playing together. It often takes me a long time to write music, and I juggle lots of ideas at the same time. If something sticks or forms a kind of identity, then I know it is worth making into a song. I am a very calm person on the outside, and quite chaotic on the inside, a personality conflict that is interesting to navigate. When I write lines I am the calm version. But when I improvise I am the chaotic person, and it is very much a stream of consciousness while at the same time trying to make sense of it all.
Flute as an instrument is something to behold. For something so light and airy, the intensity that it can also bring to a performance is cutting and surprising. The dynamic range in your playing is displayed so well on the closing track, Lokk, which begins with a whisper, but then swirls and whirls like a hurricane before fading to a mysterious black. Your performance style reminds me of other fine and fiery jazz musicians: Eric Dolphy, Minoru Muraoka, Hubert Laws—Hubert, particularly on his more intimate records. Your performance skirts across other melodic waters, though, which fascinates me during each listen. I’m unsure if I’m listening to a jazz, folk, or electronic odyssey. The melodies are quaint, reminding me of sea shanties, whereas the washes of electronics remind me of some musique concrète experimental moments that kept me on my toes during each listen. My only complaint is that the record ends.
How do you see your music progressing from here? What are your greatest aspirations as an artist: someone who routinely exposes their growing soul to the world?
It depends on which day you ask me. In a broader sense I just want to feel a genuine connection with my instrument, my sound and my audience – and grow old and happy. Being able to play the flute, create music and play live is the love of my life. If I want to be more concrete about what that would look like musically over time, it is hard to know. When you play, practice and create for many years you don’t really feel progress day by day walking out of the practice room. The progress is so fluid and sometimes unpredictable. But making these albums really helps me understand where I am, where I am going and what is on my mind right now. “Moder” is my first trio album, and I am certain I want to make a follow-up album in the near future. Right now I am allowing myself some space to figure out where I want to start for this next album.