Scheen Jazzorkester & Cortex - Frameworks - Music by Thomas Johansson

2024

Thomas Johansson  trumpet/composer (solo on 1, 4, duo on 3) | Jon Øystein Rosland  tenor saxophone (duo on 3) | Guttorm Guttormsen  alto saxophone | André Kassen  soprano saxophone (solo on 2, 5) | Kristoffer Alberts  baritone and tenor saxophone (solo on 1, 3, 4) | Line Bjørnør Rosland  clarinets | Finn Arne Dahl Hanssen  trumpet (solo on 2) | Magne Rutle  trombone | Guro Kvåle  trombone (solo on 3, 5) | Åsgeir Grong  bass trombone | Rune Klakegg  electric organ (solo on 5) | Ola Høyer  double bass (intro, solo on 3) | Jan Olav Renvåg  double bass | Dag Erik Knedal Andersen  drums (intro, solo on 4) | Audun Kleive  drums

High-flying Norwegian trumpeter and composer Thomas Johansson, much-lauded for his spellbinding work with, among others, Friends & Neighbors and Gard Nilssen’s Supersonic Orchestra, brings together two of his other formidable ensembles – premier third-stream troupe Scheen Jazzorkester and avant-garde party-starters, Cortex – for a scintillating showcase of big-band bravura.

Recorded live in the winter of 2022 at Norway’s old Hamar Teater hall, the five dynamic cuts on Frameworks have their origins in a commission from the Jazzorkester, keen to follow-up on the successes of their previous Johansson-helmed long-player, As We See It (Clean Feed, 2019).
This time around Johansson pitched an additional curveball into the mix, swelling the assembled ranks with his ebullient Cortex quartet, featuring Kristoffer Alberts (baritone and tenor saxophone), Ola Høyer (double bass) and Dag Erik Knedal Andersen (drums).

With a succession of forward-thinking full-lengths, including Live In New York (Clean Feed, 2016) and Legal Tender (Clean Feed, 2020), Cortex have garnered a warranted reputation for deeply engaging, but defiantly entertaining, jazz forms, drawing on the innovations of everyone from Charles Mingus and Ornette Coleman to Dave Douglas, while speaking in dazzling dialects all their own. Here the quartet act like a whirring free-improv dynamo operating at the heart of the orchestral body, emboldening and further energising the collective sound with extra horns and additional rhythm section.

Under Johansson’s deft stewardship, the two ensembles probe the limits of extemporisation within the confines of his masterful compositions, locking together on a series of enchanting lyrical refrains during the sumptuously languid ‘Weaving’, elsewhere embarking on the broiling back-and-forth dialogues of ‘Hoo-Hah’ and the album’s title-track. Throughout, Johansson preserves the unique essence of both groups, directing his formidable agents with intrepid ingenuity, emancipating, ennobling them to soar and explore during Frameworks’ protean, progressive, and decidedly potent, exhibitions of liberated synergy