The last days of March brought us new releases from Fundacja Słuchaj! The first two publications of this year bring us the music of Torben Snekkestad.
Torben is well known to everyone interested in Danish improvised scene, as well as to those who closely followed Barry Guy’s orchestra during their performance and recording of the Blue Shroud Band, on the stage of the Witold Lutosławski radio studio in Warsaw.
In addition, Snekkestad is also known as the leader of his own projects, to which he invites well regarded musicians from the improvised scene from both the Old Continent and across the Atlantic.
Let’s start with the album on which we can find musicians from Europe, entitled „Luisiana Variations”. It was recorded at the Copenhagen club KoncertKirken – Blågårds Plads, on July last year. On the stage, Torben was accompanied by two outstanding virtuosos of improvised music, Barry Guy on the double bass, and Agusti Fernandez behind the piano. That was the first encounter of these musicians as a trio.
This meeting, however, would only be an episode in the history od music if it had not been for Wojtek Jachna, who in one of his conveorsations with Maciej Karłowski mentioned an excellent concert he had heard while visiting Copenhagen. „A beautiful, moving concert, a real mastery!” – he added. Shortly afterwards Torben Snekkestad, when asked about this performance, admitted that it was recorded by John Fomsgaard and he would be happy to send it in the form in which he had it, which is before the final mix and mastering. It ended up as the first album released this year by Fundacja Słuchaj! – „Luisiana Variations” by Torben Snekkestad / Agusri Fernandez / Barry Guy.
In the meantime, it turned out that there is another recording worth turning into album. In 2015, in the same klub KoncertKirken – Blågårds Plads, Snekkestada met with one of the most important and at the same time the most fascinating trumpet players in the USA – Nat Wolley. The result was an astonishingly focused music, which transfers listeners into a completely different world and different order of things, enclosed in sounds played with great care, as if each of them was so fragile that any inattention could destroy its structure. Those sounds can be now found on the album „Of Echoing Bronze.”
