(Modern Creative, Avant-Garde, Art Song) Trygve Seim - Rumi Songs (with Tora Augestad, Frode Haltli & Svante Henryson) - 2016, FLAC (tracks), lossless

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Trygve Seim made an immediate impact with his ECM leader debut Different Rivers which won the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik as Album of the Year in 2001. Since then he has been heard on more than 20 ECM albums including Sangam with his large ensemble, on recordings with the collective The Source, in duos with Frode Halti and with Andreas Utnem, with Jacob Young’s group, and more. This summer he is omnipresent, appearing also with Mats Eilertsen’s septet on Rubicon, with Iro Haarla and symphony orchestra on Ante Lucem, and with Sinikka Langeland and the Trio Mediaeval on The Magical Forest, as well as his own Rumi Songs. A masterful jazz improviser, Trygve Seim expanded his palette with studies of Arab music in Cairo, and between 2005 and 2010 collaborated often with Egyptian musician Fathy Salama.
For Seim’s complete discography, visit his web site: www.trygveseim.com
Tora Augestad makes her first ECM appearance with Rumi Songs. In demand as both singer and actor, her early performing life found her specializing in Hanns Eisler, Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. She has worked often with Swiss theatre director Christoph Marthaler and given first performances of works including Beat Furrer’s opera Wüstenbuch. Cage, Schoenberg, Cathy Berberian and Berio all feature in her recital repertoire, and she leads her own band Music For A While, which spans jazz and early music.
Frode Haltli is one of the most creative contemporary accordionists, working in the fields of new music, improvisation, and traditional folk. His recordings on ECM include Looking on Darkness with music of Bent Sørensen, Asbjørn Schaathun, Magnus Lindberg, PerMagnus Lindborg, and Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje, and Passing Images featuring Garth Knox, Maja Ratkje and Arve Henriksen, as well as Yeraz, a duo recording with Trygve Seim. ECM New Series will shortly issue the album Air with music written for Haltli by Bent Sørensen and Hans Abrahamsen and featuring the accordionist playing solo and with the Arditti Quartet and the Trondheim Soloists.
Cellist Svante Henryson, who has previously appeared on ECM recordings in duo with Ketil Bjørnstad (Night Song) and as a member of Jon Balke’s Magnetic North Orchestra (Kyanos, Magnetic Works), began his musical career as principal bassist with the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra. As bass guitarist he worked with Yngwie Malmsteen’s group, and as cellist has been a chamber music partner to Anne Sofie von Otter. A veteran of numerous sessions across the idioms, he is also a composer of orchestral, choral and chamber music.
Jelaluddin Rumi, born in 1207 in Balkh, now part of Afghanistan, grew up in Waksh in Tajikistan, before moving with his family to the Anatolian city of Konya, where he spent most of his life as religious teacher and vastly prolific poet. Tolerance and open-mindedness are key themes in his verse, and legend has it that his funeral in 1273 was attended by mourners of every faith. Trygve Seim describes his work as “very human poetry, beyond religion, countries, race.”
https://www.ecmrecords.com/catalogue/1467702633
Artist Biography by Thom Jurek
Norwegian saxophonist and composer Trygve Seim is best known to English-speaking audiences for his recordings as a sideman and leader on the ECM label. In Europe and Asia his catalog is far more extensive and he is a nearly ubiquitous presence on the jazz festival circuit in both roles.
Seim was born in Norway in 1971 and began playing saxophone in 1985 after hearing Jan Garbarek's Eventyr album. He studied at the famed Trondheim Musikkonservatorium with Edward Vesala and Terje Bjørklund in the early '90s. In 1991, he and Christian Wallumrød (a fellow student) formed the quartet Airamero with bassist Johannes Eick and drummer Per Oddvar Johansen. The saxophonist also joined Jon Balke's large band Oslo 13 in 1992. Eventually, he became one of its co-leaders. Airamero issued a lone self-titled album in 1994. Through the rest of the '90s, Seim played on records by Motorpsycho, Jacob Young, Squid, and Odd Nordstoga, to name a few. He also co-founded the Source with Johansen, Øyvind Brække, and Mats Eilertsen, an ongoing concern.
The saxophonist issued his ECM leader debut Different Rivers in 2001, followed by The Source with Different Cikadas (with Brække and Johansen) and Wallumrød's Sofienberg Variations and Balke's Magnetic North Orchestra on Kyanos in 2002. Sangam, his next album as a leader, was issued in 2004. In 2006, the Source issued its self-titled album. Seim joined Sinnika Langeland's "Starflowers" group that year -- as did Arve Henriksen and Anders Jormin. Her 2007 album of the same name marked the initial collaboration of a band that has continued to tour and record. Seim followed with two more collaborative, co-headline albums: Yeraz with accordionist Frodi Haltli was released in 2008, and Purcor with Andreas Utnem in 2010. Over the next five years he recorded with the Source, and appeared on albums by Manu Katche and Arild Andersen, among others.
2016 proved prolific for Seim: He contributed to Iro Haarla's Ante Lucem, Eilertsen's Rubicon, and Langeland's The Magical Forest. In addition, his own Rumi Songs appeared in September. It offered recordings of his musical settings of works by the 13th century poet and mystic sung by mezzo-soprano Tora Augestad. The saxophonist, Haltli, and violin-cellist Svante Henryson provided accompaniment.
http://www.allmusic.com/artist/trygve-seim-mn0000019781/biography

Norwegian saxophonist Trygve Seim sets the poetry of Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-1273), using the inspired contemporary English-language versions of Coleman Barks and Kabir Helminski as his source texts. Trygve responds both to the musicality of the translations and to Rumi’s gifts as a storyteller and with Rumi Songs seems to have invented a new kind of Lieder with a Nordic-Oriental orientation. The line-up is strikingly unorthodox, with each of the quartet members bringing their own musical personalities to the material. Classical mezzo-soprano Tora Augestad is well-known as the leader of her own ensemble Music For A While, and for her numerous music-theatre collaborations with Christoph Mathaler. She finds an intimate tone to convey Rumi’s thoughts, underlined by the elegant arrangements and the improvisational input of Seim, Haltli and Henryson.
Norwegian saxophonist Trygve Seim introduces his new quartet and a wide-ranging programme of compositions which draw inspiration from the poetry of Jelaluddin Rumi. With pieces variously influenced by the classical Lieder tradition, by contemporary chamber music, Arab music, Indian music and more, these Rumi Songs resist concise definition. Some of the songs are tightly written, while others incorporate intense and inventive improvisation from bandleader Seim, accordionist Frode Haltli and cellist Svante Henryson. Mezzo-soprano Tora Augestad rises splendidly to the challenge of singing Seim’s settings of Rumi, which are based upon English translations of the poems by Coleman Barks and Kabir Helminski. “The adventure,” says Trygve, “has been to drive this song cycle in different directions by seeking many of the layers and colours in the poems and using them musically.”
With the encouragement of the late soprano singer Anne-Lise Berntsen, Trygve Seim composed his first Rumi Songs in 2003, and he has been developing the project since then, along the way exploring different instrumentation (from voice, church organ and piano to the massed ranks of the Cairo Symphony Orchestra) before settling on the present line-up. In 2013 the full cycle of Rumi Songs was premiered in Østfjold, Norway, and further fine-tuned on tour before the present recording, which was produced by Manfred Eicher at Oslo’s Rainbow Studio in February 2015. The project’s genesis is described in detail in the album’s liner notes.
https://www.ecmrecords.com/catalogue/1467702633
AllMusic Review by Thom Jurek
Encouraged by the late soprano Anne-Lise Berntsen, Norwegian saxophonist and composer Trygve Seim has been composing songs based on texts by Sufi mystic poet Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi since 2003 and experimenting with form and instrumentation. This date features his new quartet with mezzo-soprano Tora Augestad, accordionist Frode Haltli, and cellist Svante Henryson. Using formal art song, avant-garde composition, Egyptian classical music, and several other sources as guideposts, this cycle is a stellar achievement for the composer. The texts use the award-winning English translations by Coleman Barks. ("Seeing Double" was translated by Kabir and Camille Helminski with Lida Saedian.) While the pacing here is somewhat linear and the instrumentation sparse, the variety in Seim's charts -- alternately strictly annotated or sketched as lead sheets -- creates striking atmospherics and complex melodies and countermelodies for this chamber quartet. Musical surprise is everywhere. Augestad is an excellent focal point; her articulation reveals the mystery, humor, and ecstasy -- spiritual and carnal -- in Rumi's writings. When Seim's horn is on the front line, it expresses itself as smoky, soulful, wispy, and speculative, but the balance among the instruments is remarkable. "Seeing Double" uses tango, traces of French chanson, and folk-jazz. Henryson's cello offers a pizzicato bassline and a lilting lyric solo as Haltli provides quick fills and sprightly chords and Seim creates a second melody line that touches on folk music. "When I See Your Face" walks a tightrope between Egyptian and Indian modalism and nuevo tango. Seim delivers contrast by making use of Ben Webster's soulful ballad style as Haltli and Henryson engage in a canny dialogue under Augestad's vocal. It's followed by "Like Every Other Day," an elegant, purposefully drawn-out ballad that connects Brecht-Weill, Jerome Kern, and Norwegian folk music. The outlier here is the brief but startling instrumental "Whirling Rhythms," which showcases the spectrum of dialogic experience between Haltli and Seim -- whose musical relationship goes back decades. The quartet is at its best on the closer, "There Is Some Kiss We Want." Augestad expresses Rumi's observations on the deepest of the heart's longings with affirmation and generosity as the instrumentalists weave a joyful backdrop somehow simultaneously filled with yearning. Rumi Songs won't necessarily appeal to everyone, but that doesn't lessen the impact of Seim's achievement. His discipline, intuition, and imagination in writing for this group make Rumi's already accessible writings absolutely compelling as song.
http://www.allmusic.com/album/rumi-songs-mw0002966828

Trygve Seim - soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone
Tora Augestad - vocal
Frode Haltli - accordion
Svante Henryson - violoncello