Andreas Røysum Ensemble

The big band wraps visionary explosiveness in good songs.

Andreas Røysum Ensemble is a fascinating cross-section of Norway's freely improvising stages. Here we encounter musicians who feel at home in completely free constellations, and we encounter them in a context where they greedily supply themselves with jazz's more spiritual expression, while the soundscape has open windows to several parts of the world's musical heritage. It is still music with a tangible core - the band's leader, clarinetist Andreas Hoem Røysum, is an uncompromising freedom-seeking improviser and arranger, but there is also a concise, sometimes almost psychedelic pop-like sensibility in the song material on the self-titled debut album. Beautiful melodies and engaging events that stretch the possibilities that lie in the ensemble. Here, musicians from clear traditions meet, such as Sanskriti Shrestha on tabla and Hans Kjorstad on fiddle, the fiery jazz of Røysum himself and saxophonist Signe Emmeluth. Here, genre-elastic musicians such as Henriette Eilertsen and Ivar Myrset Asheim also appear - both have, among other things, had great luck with the sci-fi prog jazz band Billy Meier - and so on. In many ways it can be said that Andreas Røysum Ensemble excels the musical view the members of the big band carry in all settings - an indomitable insistence that folk music, improvised music and classical traditions from several cultural spheres belong under the same roof. If it sounds like a mouthful, the listener can rest assured that they have a unique way to put it into practice - Røysum and the band want many places with their music, but they will also have a party.