Time Is Coming

Time Is Coming

Hildegunn played as a full time professional in the Bohuslän Big Band from the age of 24, from 1990-1999, touring the world with several jazz legends. Since then, she has toured with productions such as ‘Nordic Beat’, various school concerts, and her own band.

She has been featured in several projects with the Trondheim Jazzorkester – and is often to be heard hosting national Norwegian radio shows. Hildegunn has massive experience from her extensive stays in and tours of South Africa, Pakistan, Palestine, Germany, Jordan, Japan and China.
Apart from her exceptional trumpet skills, she has always been fascinated with more ancient instruments. One of them, the ‘bukkehorn’ (goat’s horn) is featured on ‘Time Is Coming’ – and it sounds exceptionally beautiful.

Espen achieved his music Masters degree at the Institutt for Musikk in Norway in 2008. As a pianist, composer, arranger and producer he has performed at more than 500 concerts in tours covering Scandinavia, Belgium, Syria, Spain, Cuba, Hungary, Switzerland, France and the USA. He has worked with artists such as Sissel Kyrkjebø, Anders Jormin, Maher Mahmoud and Ole Edvard Antonsen.

Mats studied at the Trøndelag Musikkkonservatorium, graduating in 1997, the conservatory that produced a generation of world-class musicians. He has released seven albums under his own name and toured and recorded with the likes of Pat Metheny, Bobo Stenson, Kenny Wheeler, Lee Konitz, Joshua Redman and Ernst Reijseger.

Per Oddvar has, since 1990, toured all over East and West Europe, Asia, Canada and the USA. He has recorded on more than seventy albums. Six of them have won Norwegian Grammys. He has also released two solo albums.

Impeccably recorded, with delicacy and with depth, this album has added five years to my life. As Hildegunn breathes life into her trumpet and into her bukkehorn, I listen and I learn to breathe properly, to relax.

The bukkehorn is at least as old as the Vikings; the trumpet of course came considerably later. But Hildegunn has a time machine (in her cellar or in her head) and magically manages to connect the two. At times, her trumpet playing sounds ancient and primal and her bukkehorn sounds vibrantly and compellingly fresh and new.

Music such as this, sparse, roomy, largely minimalistic, can only be played to perfection by world-class musicians equipped with massive technical dexterity and seemingly limitless creativity. Don’t get me wrong, the album also contains build up and climax. Just listen to the intense interplay between Hildegunn (trumpet with Harmon mute) and Espen, on Savolainen.

The opening track Hildegunn Vuelie (vuelie meaning yoik – a Sámi vocal tradition) is composed by Frode Fjellheim, but an essential factor about the rest of the album is the bands’ involvement in the various compositions. Mats wrote 22 and Vise, Per Oddvar wrote Families. Espen contributed Velkomst with influences from the Latin American ‘ostinato’ form and the polyrhythmic Skoddeafall. Hildegunn wrote the eponymous Time is Coming and Savolainen.

This Norwegian band relate as though they’ve been playing together not only for several years, but also in previous lives. To perceive such synchronicity, such empathy, such compassion, such pure musicality, is a thing of joy. I’m sure that you don’t have to be Norwegian, to write and perform music like this, but growing up so close to nature itself, to fjord and fjell, must surely help to shape artistic sensibility and offer meaning to form and order.

Let’s examine the CD’s title. What does Hildegunn mean by it? She says, “Seconds tick by, but time itself, goes nowhere. It just comes. Much in life is temporary but right now, nothing is on hold; it is now that things can happen”.

Time is Coming is an album to be proud of. For all those who created, recorded and released it – and for you, who will cherish it – and breathe! This is artistry at its very best.

David Fishel