Scheen Jazzorkester - Fjon (2016) [Hi-Res]

Pianist, composer, arranger. Leader of his own groups, essential as a co-leader and sideman in several others. Teacher, writer, once the editor of the Norwegian jazz magazine Jazznytt – Rune Klakegg’s presence on the Norwegian (jazz) music scene has been diverse, distinct and not to forget important over a period of 40 years.

Well documented as his extensive work may be, one result of it has been underrepresented on records: His music for large ensembles. Fjon will serve to fill this gap.

The short version of the Fjon story goes like this: In 2006, Rune Klakegg relocated to his city of birth, Skien (spelled Scheen until 1814) some 130 kilometres southwest of Oslo, after 30 years of having had the Norwegian capital as the home base for his activities in bands like Halle – Klakegg Quartet, Rune Klakegg Trio, Eim, Out To Lunch, Cutting Edge and Søyr. Three years on, he was one of the initiators of what is today Scheen Jazzorkester, a professional, regional large ensemble under the wings of the publicly funded South-Norwegian Jazz Centre. Klakegg is the ensemble’s artistic director - or the closest thing to an artistic director, saying with a smile that “we have a pretty flat leadership structure” - and when he turned 60 last year, Scheen Jazzorkester marked the event in the shape of a concert program aptly named Runes runde (Rune’s Round). A selection of his compositions were performed, arranged for a line-up of 14 musicians, and in January this year, the jubilant and the orchestra brought Runes runde to the renowned Rainbow Studio in Oslo. Here, with his well-known, impeccable sense of detail and totality, sound engineer Jan Erik Kongshaug recorded six Klakegg originals and Klakegg’s exeptional arrangement of Henry Mancini’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s-classic, Moon River.

These recordings are now released under the title Fjon, an album where inspiration drawn from different sources, mainly jazz and classical music, melt together in various orchestral expressions. Melody-based compositions, several of them written as pieces for piano, are arranged with a friendly nod (or two) to arrangers like Gil Evans and (Evans’ intermittent student and assistant) Maria Schneider, more often than not meaning distinct melody lines played against and within a rich and often complex timbral, rhythmical and harmonic background. Quite a lot is going on in these arrangements, so much so that it will take an exceptionally well-trained listener’s ear or repeated listening to catch the full stories that they tell.

With Klakegg at the piano and vibist Rob Waring, Klakegg’s accomplice on innumerable occasions over many years, as guest, Scheen Jazzorkester handles these arrangements with a combination of improvising playfulness and skill- funded authority which is the most distinguished hallmark of true professionalism. They also receive a well-crafted contribution from another guest, singer Nina Gromstad. Her vocals on Moon River, a song known from a vast number of cover-versions which have in common that none of them sound like this one.

“I arranged Moon River for Søyr around 1990 when I was a member of that band. It is a pretty dark-sounding score, and rather different from the original one”, recalls Klakegg. He also reveals that the first song on the album, Achille, with its touch of classical impressionism is named after the pioneering French impressionist Debussy, who carried the proud first name of Achille-Claude. Starting out as a piano piece, Achille was also recorded by Klakegg’s piano trio for his 2012-album Romantic Notions. Another example of compositions having carried the transformation from trio to large ensemble well is Det er noe muffens her (There’s Something Fishy Here), first released on the album Anaerobics in 1992 and now, with the pianist in the lead, jokingly described by its composer as «the pianist’s revenge».

As pianist in bass player Tine Asmundsen’s band Lonely Woman, Klakegg wrote Slapback and Blub Club for Lonely Woman’s concert with the American saxophonist David Murray at the Kongsberg Jazzfestival in 2010. Din meg (Your Me) was composed around 2000 for Eidsvold Storband (Eidsvold Big Band), whereas Fjon is yet another example of a piano piece that made Klakegg sense a potential for expansion into a large-ensemble score, a potential he chanced to meet. As a whole, this amounts to 55 minutes of music from a vital, Norwegian jazz veteran, finding his place in a relatively fresh, but still seasoned ensemble where alto and flute player Guttorm Guttormsen (66) is one of the musicians that the teenager Rune Klakegg played together with in Skien in the early 70-ies.

And that is how it should be. Some circles are closed while others start, and whenever those never-ending processes lead to music like the music we hear on Fjon, all that remains for us to do is receive it, with a bow and gratitude.

Rune Klakegg, piano
Scheen Jazzorkester

01. Scheen Jazzorkester - Achille (8:47)
02. Scheen Jazzorkester - Slapback (6:22)
03. Scheen Jazzorkester - Din Meg (8:52)
04. Scheen Jazzorkester - Blub Club (6:55)
05. Scheen Jazzorkester - Moon River (7:52)
06. Scheen Jazzorkester - Det Er Noe Muffens Her (6:16)
07. Scheen Jazzorkester - Fjon (8:49)