Wind And Sun

Sinikka Langeland

EN / DE
“Being in a room with Sinikka Langeland is like being charmed into a northern forest under a night sky,” wrote Fiona Talkington in Songlines.  “Her presence and her voice are magical, but when she plays her kantele you can almost feel nature itself quivering with joy.”
 
The expressive arc of Sinikka’s music extends from the archaic to the experimental. Rooted in folk forms but wide-open in its perspectives it demands – and on Wind and Sun gets – particularly resourceful interpreters. Langeland’s new group is an optimum assembly of Norwegian musicians, each of them an ECM bandleader in his own right, all of them contributing ideas to the ongoing musical conversation – and, as Sinikka says, “taking things further in their incredible improvised solos.” For her song texts this time, Sinikka turns to the writings of poet and novelist Jon Fosse, one of Norway’s most important contemporary authors. Fosse has described the process of writing as “an act of listening” and wrestles with questions of faith in his work in a way that resonates with Sinikka’s fascination with “natural mysticism”. Wind and Sun, Sinikka Langeland’s seventh ECM album, was recorded at Oslo’s Rainbow Studio in September 2022 and mixed at Munich’s Bavaria Tonstudio in March 2023.
"Wenn man sich mit Sinikka Langeland in einem Raum befindet, ist es, als würde man in einen nördlichen Wald unter einem Nachthimmel verzaubert werden", schrieb Fiona Talkington im britischen Magazin Songlines. "Ihre Präsenz und ihre Stimme sind magisch, aber wenn sie ihre Kantele spielt, kann man fast spüren, wie die Natur selbst vor Freude bebt."
 
Der Ausdrucksbogen von Sinikkas Musik reicht vom Archaischen bis zum Experimentellen. In volkstümlichen Formen verwurzelt, aber weit offen in ihren Perspektiven, verlangt sie – und bekommt auf Wind and Sun – besonders kreative Interpreten. Langelands neue Gruppe ist eine optimale Zusammenstellung von norwegischen Musikern, von denen jeder für sich ein ECM-Bandleader ist, und die alle ihre Ideen in die musikalischen Dialoge einbringen – und, wie Sinikka meint, "die Musik in ihren fulminanten improvisierten Soli nochmals weiterentwickeln." Für ihre Songtexte wendet sich Sinikka diesmal den Schriften des Dichters und Romanciers Jon Fosse zu, einem der wichtigsten zeitgenössischen Autoren Norwegens. Fosse hat den Prozess des Schreibens als "einen Akt des Zuhörens" beschrieben und ringt in seinem Werk mit Fragen des Glaubens in einer Weise, die Sinikkas Faszination für "Naturmystik" widerspiegelt. Wind and Sun, Sinikka Langelands siebtes ECM-Album, wurde im September 2022 im Rainbow Studio in Oslo aufgenommen und im März 2023 im Bavaria Tonstudio in München gemischt.
Featured Artists Recorded

June 2022, Rainbow Studio, Oslo

  • 1Row My Ocean
    (Jon Fosse, Sinikka Langeland)
    07:08
  • 2Wind And Sun (instrumental)
    (Jon Fosse, Sinikka Langeland)
    02:56
  • 3It Walks And Walks
    (Jon Fosse, Sinikka Langeland)
    06:49
  • 4When The Heart Is A Moon
    (Jon Fosse, Sinikka Langeland)
    05:14
  • 5Hands That Held
    (Jon Fosse, Sinikka Langeland)
    04:06
  • 6A Child Who Exists
    (Jon Fosse, Geirr Tveitt, Sinikka Langeland)
    04:44
  • 7A Window Tells
    (Jon Fosse, Sinikka Langeland)
    06:38
  • 8The Love
    (Jon Fosse, Sinikka Langeland)
    04:48
  • 9Wind Song
    (Jon Fosse, Sinikka Langeland)
    03:15
  • 10A Child Who Exists (var.)
    (Jon Fosse, Geirr Tveitt, Sinikka Langeland)
    04:33
  • 11Wind And Sun
    (Jon Fosse, Sinikka Langeland)
    06:59
  • 12You Hear My Heart Come
    (Jon Fosse, Sinikka Langeland)
    08:46
Being in a room with Sinikka Langeland is like being charmed into a northern forest under a night sky. Her presence and her voice are magical enough, but when she plays her kantele you can almost feel nature itself quivering with joy.
Fiona Talkington, Songlines
 
Few artists have embodied the idea of the spirit of place as comprehensively as Sinikka Langeland whose music, performances, research and recordings have given a new profile to the culture of Finnskogen – the “Forest of the Finns” on Norway’s border with Sweden. Half-Finnish herself, Langeland (born in Grue in 1961) plays the Finnish national instrument, the kantele, and draws upon older traditions of folk music including rune songs and incantations in the creation of vibrantly new work. Her songs give voice to the interdependence of humanity, the natural world of plants and animals and the world of spirits. Sinikka’s deeply-rooted music has often branched out to connect and communicate with key exponents of other arts – improvisers from the jazz world, classical musicians, poets, visual artists. Sometimes, reviewer Audun Vinger suggested of recent performances at Vossajazz, Sinikka seems “ultra-hip, like a Finnish Forest Alice Coltrane. At other times, we are in the Middle Ages, in the church, in the jazz club…” The expressive arc of the music extends from the archaic to the creatively forward-looking.
 
Settings of poems by Hans Børli, Edith Södergran, Olav Håkonson Hauge and Finnish Forest rune songs have formed the core of Sinkka’s repertoire to date. With her newest album Wind and Sun, she turns her attention to the contemporary poetry of Jon Fosse, who has described the process of writing as “an act of listening,” and wrestles with questions of faith in his work in a way that resonates with Langeland’s fascination with natural mysticism. “There is so much room in Fosse’s poems, and seldom limiting terms and references. He manages to point to something touching…”
 
I want to listen to the angels who come from my dead friends
silent as snow distinct as snow
I shall see the snow melt and become water
I shall see it disappear
and come back, like eagles
I shall see the eagles come
I shall see it disappear
and hear the music
in the movement we create
and that creates us, so distinctly, in the darkness
Jon Fosse, Hund og engel 1992
 
Also participating in the Wind and Sun project is photographer Dag Alveng. “I have worked with Dag in many projects,” says Sinikka, “but I think that his art and Fosse’s poems is an especially good combination, as they also are so simple in a strong way. Jon Fosse wrote to me that he really liked Dag’s pictures: ‘There’s a kind of present disappearance in them’”.
 
 
The outstanding band on Wind and Sun – formed for concerts to celebrate Sinikka’s 60th birthday – is an all-Norwegian all-star constellation of players, all of them ECM recording artists and ensemble leaders in their own right and with complex interwoven histories going back many years. Saxophonist Trygve Seim has been an important presence on Sinikka’s recordings including Starflowers, The Land that Is Not, The Half-Finished Heaven and The Magical Forest. The yearning, vocal quality of his playing adapts itself ideally to Sinikka’s soundworld. Seim also has an affinity for sung verse, as his own Rumi Songs project with settings of the great Sufi poet has demonstrated.
 
Trygve and trumpeter Mathias Eick have played together in wildly different contexts ranging from Iro Haarla’s Northbound quintet to Jon Balke’s Batagraf ensemble via the Manu Katché band. Eick and drummer Thomas Strønen have collaborated in the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, while bassist Mats Eilertsen and Eick have both been members of Jacob Young’s groups. Furthermore, Strønen continues to play in Eilertsen’s trio with pianist Harmen Fraanje, and Eilertsen is a long-time member of the free spirited ensemble The Source, which also features Trygve Seim. In brief, these are sensitive players, who share an advanced improvisational understanding, individually and collectively elevating the atmospheres of Sinikka’s songs, and fleshing out the musical implications set in motion by the kantele and Fosse’s verse. Sinikka: “All of the players have really been very loyal to the simplicity in the music, following my writing and the expressions of the poems and then taking things further in their own incredible improvised solos.”
 
Wind and Sun was recorded at Oslo’s Rainbow Studio in September 2022 and mixed at Munich’s Bavaria Tonstudio in March 2023.