Terje Rypdal
"This sense of belonging to nature - you can feel it in everything I do"
Norwegian guitarist and composer Terje Rypdal, tone poet of the Fender Stratocaster, was born in Oslo in 1947. The son of a military conductor and clarinettist, Rypdal began piano lessons aged five and took up the trumpet three years later. When he was twelve he began teaching himself the guitar. While still in his teens, he became a member of the Vanguards, a Norwegian instrumental rock group that climbed the local pop charts, and then, after hearing Jimi Hendrix, he formed a psychedelic rock band, Dream, in 1967. But Rypdal’s influences have always been eclectic: he was drawn to the music of Ligeti and Penderecki as well as Coltrane and Miles Davis. He recalled in an interview with Notes on the Road: "I heard Ligeti's music and I decided then to try to make a living [...]
"This sense of belonging to nature - you can feel it in everything I do"
Norwegian guitarist and composer Terje Rypdal, tone poet of the Fender Stratocaster, was born in Oslo in 1947. The son of a military conductor and clarinettist, Rypdal began piano lessons aged five and took up the trumpet three years later. When he was twelve he began teaching himself the guitar. While still in his teens, he became a member of the Vanguards, a Norwegian instrumental rock group that climbed the local pop charts, and then, after hearing Jimi Hendrix, he formed a psychedelic rock band, Dream, in 1967. But Rypdal’s influences have always been eclectic: he was drawn to the music of Ligeti and Penderecki as well as Coltrane and Miles Davis. He recalled in an interview with Notes on the Road: "I heard Ligeti's music and I decided then to try to make a living as a composer and guitar player." Michael Tucker has described “Rypdal's blending of rock and jazz phrasing with a rubato concern for tone colour and dynamics often redolent of the classical world”.
Rypdal’s relationship with ECM dates back to 1970, when he was part of Jan Garbarek’s quartet on Afric Pepperbird, the saxophonist’s own label debut. Some Rypdal material that didn’t find its way onto Garbarek’s Sart the following year led ECM’s Manfred Eicher to suggest Rypdal record his own album, thereby beginning one of the label’s most fertile and long-lasting collaborations. Rypdal’s eponymous debut as leader was recorded that same year.
A 3-CD set released in 2012, Odyssey in Studio & in Concert, brought together some landmark early Rypdal recordings from the mid-1970s. A BBC review identified in the set “shades of prog, psychedelia and a foretaste of Rypdal's later atmospheric tone poems”. A logn series of collaborations with fellow ECM artists have followed, including Palle Mikkelborg, Jon Christensen, Miroslav Vitous, Jack DeJohnette and John Surman.
Yet, having studied composition with Finn Mortensen, he is also a prolific composer, with an opus list that includes six symphonies, choral and chamber music and pieces for mixed groups of classical players and improvisers. Undisonus received critical acclaim on its release in 1990 and won Work of the Year prize from the Society of Norwegian Composers. ECM released an album featuring his Double Concerto/5th Symphony in 1998 and Lux Aeterna in 2000, an intense, personal celebration of nature, light and the mountains of Rypdal’s childhood.
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