Solveig Slettahjell Quartet - Gullokk

The idea of a selected “Nordic Songbook” presented as a quartet album is something that Solveig Slettahjell has nurtured for several years. In selecting songs, she has taken delight from gathering material that would not necessarily seem compatible, but she has done so with the knowledge and ambition that the compatibility will come in the execution. Throughout, Solveig's unhurried, easy-going style places its mark upon each of the songs so clearly, it would be easy to assume they were all her own. Her voice, immediately recognisable, dominates without overpowering the measured accompaniment. No excesses, no superfluous ornamentation. In this eclectic collection we find Edvard Grieg's "Ved Rondane", Eva Dahlgren's "Guldlock", Alf Prøysen's "Trassvisa hennes Tora", songs by Allan Edwall, Orup and Anne Grete Preus, interspersed with folk tunes and newly written material by Slettahjell herself and Andreas Ulvo. The songs are brought together in the performance of them, their unification both organic and whole, as though all sprang from the same source.

The quartet comprises some of the biggest musicians in Norwegian jazz today; Andreas Ulvo on piano, Trygve Waldemar Fiske on bass and Pål Hausken on drums. Together they treat these songs with the same love and creative spark that characterizes jazz's handling of "the American songbook". The whole project has the feeling of a kind of Scandinavian chamber jazz inspired by many who have gone before - Zetterlund, Johanson, Brockstedt, Rosseland - but with Slettahjell and the quartet's clear ownership and personal signature as the central element.

The album was recorded in Propeller studio - live in the studio, direct to tape, the band’s preferred working method. It is also mixed live by Mike Hartung and Kåre Christoffer Vestrheim, who produced the album together with Solveig, and with the whole quartet as co-producers.

The visuals for this album are based on Solveig's own photographs from the pier on Malmøya where she lives. Throughout the pandemic, she took more than 600 photos of the same subject, and she has been fascinated by how expression and mood change with the light and weather, even though the pier is the same. The association with how the songs changes according to how they are sung and played is obvious.