FLY NORTH - Jan Gunnar Hoff

fly north

Music has been a part of us all from hunter-gatherer to farmer, from the industrial to the sophisticated. It’s eerily innate. The music on this album defies description as much as it defines emotion. It doesn’t require analysis, it offers friendship, sensual reward and somehow, a feeling of ultimate hope.

Fly North! is an invitation - a visa to the Scandinavian school of cool, with release from rule. Come here, come hear! Softly stated virtuosi, memorable motif, and a sonic panorama that, prima vista, becomes a part of you.

Fly North! is a refuge; an escape plan from an increasingly anxious world. Fly to the higher regions of your sensibilities, to a stress-free environment offering space and solace; room for contemplation and calm.

This is an album to be experienced as ‘an entirety’. There are individual tracks and there is individuality in the performance, but essentially, there is a oneness. It is the sweetest of suites.


This is a gentle giant of an album, Nordic nuance lovingly crafted to soothe your soul. So fly north, free from convention, no passport control, no baggage.  And if you're already ‘north’, then you're at home!

Jan Gunnar Hoff is a Norwegian jazz pianist, composer, arranger, professor and prize winner. He performed with Arve Henriksen (trumpet, effects, vocals), Anders Jormin (acoustic bass) and Marilyn Mazur (drums, percussion) at the Bodø Jazz Open 2012. This was a commissioned work, Living, which resulted in an eponymous solo piano album in 2013. The aforementioned musicians join him on Fly North!
Jan Gunnar continues to perform and record worldwide enjoying collaborations with, among others, Alex Acuna, Maria Joao, Mike Stern and ‘home-grown’ musicians such as Per Mathisen, Mathias Eick and Audun Kleive.
Arve Henriksen is an award-winning Norwegian trumpet player with one of the most distinctive sounds in contemporary music. His work includes performance and recordings with Jon Balke (Magnetic North Orchestra), Supersilent, Misha Alperin, Dhafer Youssef, Ernst Reijseger, David Sylvian, the Cikada String Quartet, John Paul Jones and Motorpsycho!
Anders Jormin, a Swedish bass player and composer, currently teaches double bass and improvisation and holds a professorial post at the Academy of Music and Drama at Gothenburg University. His credit list includes work with Bobo Stenson (6 albums), Charles Lloyd (4 albums), Tomasz Stańko (3 albums), Elvin Jones, Don Cherry, Lee Konitz, Joe Henderson, Paul Motian and Kenny Wheeler.
Marilyn Mazur was born in New York and moved to Denmark at the age of six. Predominantly renowned as a drummer and percussionist, Marilyn also plays piano and is a vocalist, dancer and bandleader. She has worked with, among others, Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter, Gil Evans, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, Palle Mikkelborg and Jan Garbarek.