Northern Light: Jazz in Scandinavia

For its August 2002 issue, Musica Jazz turned toward ECM’s Scandinavian constellation and produced a compilation whose geography liquefies under scrutiny. The disc crosses eras and temperaments, yet identity travels freely between leaders and sidemen. Scandinavia becomes a psychic latitude where silence acquires calcium and melody sings in minerals. The opening “Fort Cherry,” connected to Don Cherry’s Dona Nostra (ECM 1448), immediately unsettles expectation. Turkish percussionist Okay Temiz scatters rhythmic spores while Bobo Stenson’s piano rises through them with organic grace. Anders Jormin supplies the subterranean logic, tunneling beneath the visible music. The title track from StAR (ECM 1444) brings Jan Garbarek together with Miroslav Vitous, while Peter Erskine completes the circuitry. Vitous’s bass moves with solemn ceremony as Garbarek draws pale filaments across the upper register. His saxophone opens a doorway in the sky, its keyhole containing another world. Erskine…