“I’m not into any special tradition. When I was a kid I played folk dance music with my uncle, later on I became interested in Balkan music and free jazz, and I played in a punk band. So when I started on Hardanger I tried to use the instrument simply as an instrument, not trying to learn a tradition.”
Hardanger fiddle master Nils Økland was born in Haugesund in western Norway in 1961. He attended the Rogaland Music Conservatory and the Norwegian State Academy of Music, where he studied violin with Terje Tønnesen. He also studied Hardanger fiddle with Knut Hamre and Sigbjørn Bernhoft Osa. A scholarship took him to the Budapest Academy, and in Amsterdam he studied the music of Biber with Jan Willem de Vriend. He was musical director of the Ole Bull Academy (named after the 19th-century Norwegian violinist-composer) in Voss for six years.
Økland has [...]
“I’m not into any special tradition. When I was a kid I played folk dance music with my uncle, later on I became interested in Balkan music and free jazz, and I played in a punk band. So when I started on Hardanger I tried to use the instrument simply as an instrument, not trying to learn a tradition.”
Hardanger fiddle master Nils Økland was born in Haugesund in western Norway in 1961. He attended the Rogaland Music Conservatory and the Norwegian State Academy of Music, where he studied violin with Terje Tønnesen. He also studied Hardanger fiddle with Knut Hamre and Sigbjørn Bernhoft Osa. A scholarship took him to the Budapest Academy, and in Amsterdam he studied the music of Biber with Jan Willem de Vriend. He was musical director of the Ole Bull Academy (named after the 19th-century Norwegian violinist-composer) in Voss for six years.
Økland has become a distinctive presence on ECM recordings in the 21st century. Recordings with Christian Wallumrød – Sofienberg Variations and A Year From Easter – gave early notice of the scope of his inventiveness. The solo album Monograph was hailed as “folk music regenerated without nostalgia, music on the global stage” (Julian Cowley, The Wire). Lysøen: Hommage à Ole Bul presented music by – and inspired by – Bull, and the drone-rock of Lumen Drones further expanded the horizons of one of Norway’s most resourceful musicians.
The 2015 release, Kjølvatn, marked the first outing on disc for the fiddle player’s new group, the Nils Økland Band. Jane Cornwell wrote in the Evening Standard of the album’s “startling beauty”, praising how “plucked chords, floating drones and edgy dynamics create atmospheric settings for Økland’s seductive, nuanced bow work.”
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