Jazzed Out, Oslo

"The most beautiful sound next to silence" is the motto of ECM Records, the Scandinavian label that has played a large part in defining the jazz sound from that part of the world. This episode of Jazzed Out, the series that seeks to take jazz out of the smokey clubs – its 20th Century home – and thrust it into the open air, takes place in Oslo, Norway, a country that has made its own, singular mark on the international stage. The Norwegian sound is famous, perhaps only stereotypically, for its chilly, spacious tone, though a large part of what defines it is the hunger for iconoclasm and breaking the mould through electronic, noise and ambient. 

Each end of the spectrum is emphasised in this film, which pictures musicians in locations that allow the music room to breathe. Håkon Kornstad plays a piece on his baritone with the aid of the acoustic cloisters of a church, the great trumpeter Nils Petter Molvær and his trio play two striking pieces in a beautiful mausoleum with frescos on the walls and the great Bugge Wesseltoft delivers a piano solo that is brimming with intrigue in an old house.