A Place Called Home Oddgeir Berg Trio

• 1 Into the Mountains (Sula) 03:40
• 2 As We Wander Around 03:05
• 3 Circles 05:35
• 4 Perpetuum Mobile 04:07
• 5 Triste 04:16
• 6 Hommage (Dance Like Nobody's Watching) 03:27
• 7 Song for My Mother 04:42
• 8 Happiness Is Where You Are 03:12
• 9 Where the Sun Never Sleeps 04:35
• 10 Epilogue 01:54
• Total Runtime 38:33

Info for A Place Called Home

Rolla ist klein und dünn besiedelt – gerade einmal 900 Menschen leben hier. Auf “A Place Called Home” entführt uns Oddgeir Berg auf diese Insel, den Geburtsort seines Vaters, für ein Konzeptalbum über die Magie der Natur, Erinnerungen und Familienbande.

Die Musik wurde mit einer neuen Trio-Besetzung und während einer Zeit persönlicher Turbulenzen geschrieben, als Bergs Mutter an Krebs erkrankte. Wie nicht anders zu erwarten, wirkt die Musik intim und pastoral, ist zumeist langsam und introspektiv.

Aber es gibt auch viele Momente sanfter Erkundung sowie ein wunderbares Bass-Solo des neuen Mitglieds Audun Ramo. Rolla ist ein traumhafter Ort – aber eben auch einer voller Fernweh.

Oddgeir Berg, Keyboards
Audun Ramo, Kontrabass
Lars Berntsen, Schlagzeug

Oddgeir Berg Trio
Electroacoustic jazz with one leg in melancholy and the other in ecstasy

Jazz trios named after the piano player give certain expecations, be it Horace Silver and his tender "Que Pasa" or Esbjørn Svensson and his Northern sounds, clarity and intimacy are common to these, with a hint of tonal melancholy.

These characteristics also feature on "Before Dawn", the debut album from The Oddgeir Berg Trio, who are clearly familiar with a Scandinavian jazz tradition. Tunes such as "The Mermaid’s Dance" and "Springeren" summon images of bonfires by the sea lit to herald the summer solstice, and the inevitable turn of the season when Autumn arrives and buries its roots and turns with fine melodic lines into the silence of winter.

The trio has some other tricks up its sleeve though, most importantly an urgency for action, pace and adventure, best heard in "A.C.M" and "Slogro" with their rhythmic relocations and aggressive radiance. Here the Oslo based trio has more in common with Miles Davis’ Jack Johnson than Scandinavia’s Jan Johannson. The Jimi Hendrix rock sound of the doublebass and the propulsive drum sound energetically support Berg’s playing. Berg’s curiosity in experimenting with Wurlitzer\Rhodes and synthesizer sounds sneaks into the soundscape and lends a distinctive colour to the sound panorama.

Booklet for A Place Called Home