CD ECM Records Trio Mediaeval, Arve Henriksen: Rimur

2017

Anna Maria Friman - voce, Hardanger Fiddle
Linn Andrea Fuglseth - voce, Shruti Box
Berit Opheim - voce
Arve Henriksen - trompeta

Over several summers Trio Mediaeval and trumpeter Arve Henriksen spent many days together by the beautiful Dalsfjorden on the Norwegian west coast, and it was there that most of the music for this recording was born. Fascinated and inspired by Icelandic sagas, beautiful chants, folk songs, religious hymns and fiddle tunes, the quartet has arranged a unique set of songs where improvisation, mediaeval and traditional music from Iceland, Norway and Sweden meet the present. Henriksen has often performed with Trio Mediaeval in live settings – and the singers and trumpeter appear on Sinikka Langeland’s recent record The Magical Forest – but Rímur is their first extensive collaboration on disc. It was recorded in February 2016 at Munich’s Himmelfahrtskirche, and produced by Manfred Eicher.



This is a beautiful recording that may will bring Trio Mediaeval to a new and wider audience in much the same way that the Hilliard Ensemble did with their collaboration with Jan Garbarek that lasted for twenty years and produced three albums. And that is maybe where the appeal in this extraordinary music lies. In this instance the blending of the three female voices along with the fourth voice of Henriksen's liquid trumpet playing running through it to seamlessly create a fabric of sound that it at once fragile and yet has a tensile strength. The voices have soft yet focussed delivery with precise diction and pronunciation given as much prominence as the subtle harmonies and varying dynamics employed by the trio, yet flexible enough in the arrangement and performance to allow for Henriksen's unique sound elicited from the trumpet, often with the mouthpiece removed and sounding not unlike the Japanese shakuhachi, to float in and around the voices.
Nick Lea, Jazz Views