Commissioned by the Molde International Jazz Festival and recorded live at the Norwegian festival in 2010, “La notte” is a salute to Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni, whom Ketil Bjørnstad counts amongst his formative influences. “At the same time that I discovered what jazz could be, after listening to Miles Davis’ In A Silent Way, I also saw the films by Godard, Bresson and Antonioni. Perhaps it was the slow, rhythmic authority in the films by Michelangelo Antonioni that made me think of music… As long as visual art creates music in our minds, and music creates pictures and visual expressions with the same intensity, the two are deeply and profoundly interdependent”. This album, then, can be considered “the soundtrack to an inner film”, in which Antonioni’s images and atmospheres are translated and transformed through personal moods and memories. For the Molde concert, Bjørnstad convened a special Norwegian-Danish-German-British band of musicians, old and new friends closely associated with ECM. The concert was rapturously received by the media, and described as an “absolutely stunning performance” by All About Jazz.
„Es war wohl die langsame, rhythmische Autorität in den Filmen von Michelangelo Antonioni, die mich an Musik denken ließ, selbst wenn es in einem Film wie ‚L’Eclisse’ gar keine Musik gab. Aber die letzte Szene in diesem Film, mit ihrem Fokus auf das Apartmenthaus und dem zu einem neuen Tag erwachenden Rom, ist eben Musik für mich“, sagt der Musiker.
Und so komponierte Bjørnstad acht von der Filmsprache Antonionis inspirierte Stücke, die er mit einem Ensemble aus bestens von vielen anderen ECM-Alben bekannten Musikern (Andy Sheppard, Saxofon; Anja Lechner, Cello; Eivind Aarset, Gitarre; Arild Andersen, Baß, und Marilyn Mazur, Percussion) beim Jazz Festival im norwegischen Molde vorstellte, wo das vorliegende Album live aufgenommen wurde.
