Emil Brandqvist - Interludes (2024)

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Emil Brandqvist - Interludes (2024)

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With his playing Emil Brandqvist has meanwhile firmly established himself among the elite of European Jazz musicians. The drummer from Gothenburg, Sweden has stirred up sensational attention, above all together with his trio featuring Tuomas A. Turunen on piano and Max Thornberg on bass. Only recently the trio won distinction for a solid 50 million streams of their music worldwide, and the last album, "Layers Of Life", climbed to No. 2 on the German Jazz Charts. But to scale Emil Brandqvist down to his role as bandleader and musician short-changes his track record, because it's primarily the composer Emil Brandqvist who allows this Swede's popularity to grow and grow. With "Interludes" he is now offering own compositions in variegated instrumentations.

This collection of pieces consolidates a total of nine works which previously had been exclusively available digitally as the song cycle "Three Songs Part 1 - 3". Having originated over the last four years, among the instruments we hear are the lap steel guitar, pump organ, bass clarinet, violin, voices and the keyed fiddle. Alongside drums and percussion, Emil Brandqvist himself also plays piano and a Rhodes, though on some tracks he appears merely as composer. The jointly prevailing mood on the album is very serene and a wonderful journey to the stillness of the north lost in thought.

Tracks like "Poem Of The Sea", "Waiting For The Rain" or "Sleep" point the way there, and with "Lilac" this release also displays a digital hit: in the meantime the song has been streamed over four million times. Two new pieces specially recorded for "Interludes" entitled "The Living Room Conductor" and "The Living Room Gymnast" ultimately feature the Emil Brandqvist Trio united once again. Together with Tuomas A. Turunen and Max Thornberg along with Martin Brandqvist on wind instruments, here the drummer devotes himself to nordic audiophonic worlds in their most intimate form. Equally noteworthy is the fact that the album is a genuine family project. In addition to his wife, Nina Ewald, and brother, Martin Brandqvist, who contributes the widest variety of winds, Hakan Brandqvist, his father, concludes the album playing the organ on "Honeysuckle". The credit for the artwork goes to Emil's second brother, Jakob Brandqvist.

As was the case with the last of the trio's albums, Ake Linton was in charge of the audio engineering. His proven credentials include best references due to his work for E.S.T.