Label: Challenge Records
Format: CD
Barcode: 0608917357820
Catalog number: CR 73578
Releasedate: 17-01-25
Format: CD
Barcode: 0608917357820
Catalog number: CR 73578
Releasedate: 17-01-25
Unique Selling Points
- Piano, double bass and trumpet create nine gems on the current album.- Small effects such as large reverb give the pieces even more depth.
- Additional soundscapes fit in well with the acoustic sound of the trio, which has merged into a chamber music unit.
Description
"Flóð og Fjara" are high and low tide, the tides that are constantly repeated and yet always different."Flóð og Fjara" is the album of Gulli Gudmundsson's new project. The Icelandic bassist has been a cornerstone of the Dutch jazz scene for many years. His new trio has a chamber music line-up. With pianist Jeroen van Vliet and trumpeter Koen Smits, he has found two musicians who are looking for the same sound ideals.
Icelandic bassist Gulli Gudmundsson (born 1971) has been playing double bass since a young age. He moved to the Netherlands to study jazz double bass with Jacques Schols, Frans van der Hoeven and Hein van de Geyn at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. Even before his graduation in 1999, he was rooted in the Dutch jazz scene and can be heard on more than 40 albums to date.
He has toured all over Europe and to other continents. He played at the North Sea Jazz Festival as well as at festivals in Korea, Japan and Hong Kong.
Special mention must be made of Gulli Gudmundsson's participation in the band Gatecrash of trumpeter Eric Vloeimans, in the Acoustic Quartet of saxophonist Yuri Honing and in the trio of pianist Wolfert Brederode, with whom he was able to record the album "Black Ice" for the renowned German label ECM.
He has been teaching at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague since 2018.
The double bass player has had many years of collaboration with Jeroen van Vliet, and the two already played together in Eric Vloeimans’ Gatecrash where they learned to appreciate each other’ playing. Since 2009, the two musicians have also been playing together in a duo.
During the pandemic, Gulli Gudmundsson and Jeroen van Vliet worked together with sound artist Michel Banabila on the EP Glow/Speck of Dust. Trumpeter Koen Smits (born in Tilburg) joined the duo at the new Make It Jazz festival in 2022, and the trio was born.
Piano, double bass and trumpet create nine gems on the current album; six of the nine pieces are by the bassist, one by the pianist, one by the Spanish composer Federico Moreno Torroba and one by the Icelandic composer Þorkell Sigurbjörnsson.
Small devices create effects such as large reverberations and give the pieces even more depth. The two "old hands" take the young trumpeter Koen Smits (born in 1991) under their wings and integrate him perfectly. Large emotional arcs, dream-like interaction and impressive emotional depth take the listener on a journey through soundscapes.
Gulli Gudmundsson seems to have substantial fondness for trumpeters, because he has played not only with Eric Vloeimans, but also with Arve Henriksen
And Koen Smits interprets the longing sound very well: with his very airy trumpet tone, he is in the tradition of Scandinavian brass players such as Arve Henriksen, Mathias Eick and Nils Petter Molvaer. Smit's solos have lyrical depth, very melodic improvisation arcs and are often so sophisticated that they could pass as a second melody.
Using the example of "Heyr, himna smiður" (Listen, Builder of the Sky) by the Icelandic composer Þorkell Sigurbjörnsson (1938 to 2013), you can understand very well what makes the collaboration in this trio so special.
It is only a small piece, the title of which is like a hymn, a small hymn, but which already creates a wonderful atmosphere through the intertwining of piano and double bass in the introduction with all the lively chords. A small bass interlude leads into the melody, which is taken over by the piano, while the trumpet fills up with long notes in the background and takes over the resolutions to the thirds in the melody before moving to the foreground as a soloist and adding highlights to the clear voicing in the chords.
As the trio shows here, which is representative of the album, each musician knows exactly what is needed of his instrument, when the right moment is to step into the foreground and when the others must be given priority. All three find each other and present the complete simple melody in the last half minute of "Heyr, himna smiður". A masterly arrangement!
Some pieces such as "Komdu Heim" get another layer through their technical processing; the piano gets so much reverberation in Jeroen van Vliet's composition "Panta” that it produces almost keyboard-like sounds.
The additional sound surfaces fit well into the acoustic sound of the trio, which melts together into a chamber musical unit.
This special trio will certainly make a name for themselves with their equally special album 2025.
Gulli Gudmundsson describes the inspiration from his special family history:
“The music has its roots in the story of my grandparents, who met in the north of Iceland in 1911. He was a sailor from Germany, she was a young woman from a farming family. They married quickly, had a child and moved to Bremerhaven together, where a second child was born. On a trip to the USA, he got stuck in New York City harbor and was not allowed to go ashore because the First World War had broken out during the voyage. It was not possible to contact him or the crew and we do not know how he got out of this predicament.
Without knowing what had happened to him, my grandmother took her two children and moved back to Iceland.
The next thing we knew, my grandmother received a letter from him saying that he was the manager of a sugar plantation in Cuba and was collecting money to return to his family. Several years passed, but before he could make the journey home, he fell ill with cholera or malaria and died. He is buried somewhere in Cuba, we don't know where. My grandmother had a German surname, which is unusual in Iceland, and my mother used it as a middle name.
The tragic story of my grandparents served as inspiration for this album: Their love affair, the move with their child to the big continent and the subsequent loss of contact due to the First World War, their wait for a message from him...
Another common thread in the fabric of the songs is the pull and push like ebb and flow of our feelings for home.
What is home? Why do we often yearn for our old home?
Why do some people return to their birthplace? What feelings does it trigger in us? Are they important? Where is home? Is it possible to find a new home in a foreign country? Where do we really belong? Do we belong after living abroad as a foreigner for a long time? Where are the roots if they have been cut off?
For me, ebb and flow stands for the pulling and pushing of your homeland in your heart.”