Folk Songs

“We would like to see this recording as our contribution to a living, oral tradition; although these songs bear our musical imprint, they are coloured by all those who have performed and passed on the music before us.”

The Trio Mediaeval have included Norwegian folk songs in their concert repertoire from the beginning of their history. Now this material is the subject of an extraordinary new album, the fourth disc from the Norwegian-Swedish trio, augmented here by percussionist Birger Mistereggen. Its intensely melodic programme - of music the singers have known since childhood - incorporates a wide array of spontaneous interaction and the most diverse vocal techniques, colours, moods and atmospheres. The recording of these ballads, hymns and lullabies arranged for voices and percussion is above all a celebration of music that has long inspired them. The disc’s release also coincides with the trio’s tenth anniversary as a performing group.

Faithful to the musical spirit of the songs and to the storyline of the texts, the Trio’s interpretations of these folk pieces are also strikingly original. As might be expected of a group renowned for its challenges to orthodoxy (the early sacred pieces in their repertoire, after all, were not intended to be sung by women), the trio do not make “authenticity” a goal, but approach the music in a very fresh way, making it “wonderfully alive” (as the Washington Post noted of their folk song performances in 2005).

Folk music, of course, is based on oral tradition, and the multitude of contemporary arrangements and interpretations available underlines their continued importance in Norway’s musical life. The country’s wide and varied heritage of folk music is well documented and researched and, crucially, folk music has remained a living tradition in Norway. It has inspired many musicians from different backgrounds, a phenomenon that can be clearly observed on numerous ECM jazz releases from Jan Garbarek to Frode Haltli and Christian Wallumrød. (In fact one of the tunes recorded by the trio here, the wedding march from Gudbrandsdalen, made its first appearance on an ECM disc 35 years ago, on Garbarek’s “Triptykon”). Trio Mediaeval are not improvisers in a ‘jazz’ sense but their interpretative freedom and spontaneity has caught the attention of jazz musicians (and led to recent live collaborations with Tord Gustavsen, Arve Henriksen, and others).

For their “Folk Songs” project, the trio decided to integrate percussionist Birger Mistereggen, who broadens their sonic spectrum by adding an archaic, and viscerally thrilling, rhythmic counterpoint to the elegant vocal blend. Mistereggen says, “We like to think of the percussion as an earthen element, beneath the ethereal voices up there in the skies.” The notion of accompanying songs with percussion is uncommon today but not arbitrary, and the voice/drums blend has a history in Norwegian folk music that can be traced back to at least the 17th century. The importance of the drums to the folk tradition is explained in the performers’ note in the CD booklet.

“Folk Songs” is the first of the trio’s ECM discs made with the active participation of Manfred Eicher as recording producer (John Potter having supervised recording of the previous discs). Songs selected for the recording made in the generous acoustics of the Austrian monastery of St. Gerold stem from regions such as Vestfold or Telemark and many of them have been sung by the great folk singers of the north. The Trio’s record pays tribute to the influential Norwegian folk trio “Tiriltunga” but most of the arrangements here were shaped by Linn Andrea Fugleseth and Tone Krohn, a folksinger from Linn’s hometown Sanderfjord in the Vestfold county.

The new album will be presented at a special launch event as part of the Ultima Contemporary Music Festival in Oslo on September 30. The trio follows with further concerts in Norway, then dates in England, Germany and France, and a tour of the United States. In February 2008 they head eastward, stopping in Estonia on their way to the Hong Kong Arts Festival.