Jazz byRichard Cook
Americans used to say that the only European jazz musician of any note was Django Reinhardt. Such insularity has resulted in un-American jazz rarely getting its due, either over there or even among the countries in which it lives. Europeans, cursed as second-hand disciples, seldom make a mark outside their local community, and a mere handful of modern players have made an impression on British listeners. Bereft of promotion, resource and limelight, the self-sufficiency of Eurojazz has made it a tough, fertile and surprising area of music. Just as American jazz has its regional aspects, so does the European model take on local colours. Italian players often display a Neapolitan love for romantic melody. The Dutch have a theatrical, sometimes surreal bent.
The expected thing about Swedish jazz is that it's cool. The Swedish jazz audience has always, for sure, been among the hippest in Europe. They were almost the first to cheer on bebop in the 1940s. Stockholm has always made visiting jazzmen welcome, to the point where some stayed on (it is an irresistible city). Stan Getz made some of his most enjoyable records in Sweden, and his language - lean, romantic, quick-witted - rubbed off on many of the players. But Swedish musicians are seldom sighted outside their local environs, which makes the Swedish Jazz Extravaganza - well, they had to call it something - all the more extraordinary. The Swedish Concert Institute has somehow provided the means to bring in 19 different groups to play in London venues over a period of eight days. It is a peerless opportunity to hear what makes their music work.
The old-timers of the company, Putte Wickman and Arne Domnerus, are survivors of original Swedish bebop, and still, judging by their records, formidable players. What they did was adapt the primal heat of the original idiom to a kind of calm virtuosity: serene but not chilled. It was something quite different to the British way of handling bebop, which had a jolted quality, like musicians startled out of dance-band language and into something a lot more difficult.
Wickman, who plays the unfashionable clarinet, traces his roots all the way back to Benny Goodman, but his playing has a timeless poise which seems at home in any setting. Hearing him and Domnerus, and then following that with some of the younger players, should show the subtle way Sweden softened and distilled a style that the players couldn't and didn't want to duplicate in its original form. The most important influence on that evolution was probably the great baritone saxophonist Lars Gullin, who died in the 1970s: his compositions, drawing on an impressionism that steals up on you as gently as featherfall, are a unique part of the jazz literature.
Gullin's legacy comes out in the haunting and almost folk-like songs and singing of Jeanette Lindstrom, or the ballad playing of the pianist Esbjorn Svensson. But the Swedes have, inevitably, found further inspirations in more recent jazz developments. The trumpeter Anders Bergcrantz, one of the outstanding performers in Europe and scandalously little known, called his most recent album C, in honour of John Coltrane, and he is probably typical of a generation of jazz musicians who can walk easily into a dozen different situations. Eclecticism can be as much of a trap as a blessing in jazz, with so many performers trying out too many things and ending up diffuse beyond recognition. Most of these visitors, though, have found a way of translating the babble of jazz dialects into something clear-headed and specific - which is, perhaps, the pay-off of Swedish cool.
The Swedes perform in several London venues between 5 and 12 February. Call 0171-937 2377 for details
Post this article to
We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.
