RYMDEN + KORK

2023 release

Since forming in 2018 RYMDEN has established itself as one of the leading piano trios to ever emerge from the Nordic Jazz scene. All three members bring with them long-confirmed and lauded histories as innovators in jazz: Berglund and Öström via the Esbjörn Svensson Trio and their own projects (Tonbruket and Magnus Öström Band respectively); Wesseltoft via his New Conception of Jazz and other projects. Now, after several albums and many concerts, they meet KORK, an orchestra capable of responding to the trifold creative power that RYMDEN vigorously generates. KORK, for over three-quarters of a century has followed its own musical curiosity across genres, from "standard" orchestral repertoire, both classical and contemporary, to jazz, rock, and pop. Through close association with NRK, KORK has been heard across the world through its participation in the annual Nobel Peace Prize concert and the Eurovision Song Contests in 1986 and 1996.

The combination of RYMDEN and KORK brings even greater contrast to music that already had its fair share of light and shade and brings a broader textural palette that enriches and defamiliarizes the compositions. These new arrangements expand on their source material, creating a different musical world without sacrifice of its original spirit. The compositions, already filled with drama or meditative passages, menace or light-hearted humour, rhythmic drive or fragmentary expression, are repainted, sometimes with the lightest of nuanced touches, other times with densely layered maximalism. Where the collaboration of RYMDEN and KORK may have been unexpected for some, the perfect alignment of the results suggest that it was inevitable.