Andreas Ulvo has gathered some of his favourite musicians for his latest release. Ulvo is navigating though his own personal musical universe; a seamless melange where everything from jazz, pop, classical and folk music all are natural ingredients; everything done with an improvisatory approach. Beautiful melodies are mixed with rhythmical motifs, Improvisation is used as a glue in the compositions. Spaceludium I and II are purely improvised passages, where the mood is more like a state of mind, contrasting the more narrative expression often found in the other compositions. In the song «The Wind», Ulvo is playing the song on the grand piano, while Håkon Aase are improvision with respectively bow hairs and brushes on the strings inside the grand piano.

Despite my strong relationship to classical music, as a performer I never had the patience to sit down to learn to read music properly. Reading music felt too much like a detour from my goal of making music. The road to improvised music and jazz was a more immediate and natural way for me to go. However when immersing myself in the standard jazz repertoire, I eventually came to the conclusion that even jazz isn’t necessarily free. There are a lot of written and unwritten rules you have to follow. For me the real essence of jazz reveals itself only in the moment you realize that it’s not a genre; jazz is music with an improvised quality. Of course, you could never say that to a jazz critic. If you tell him: “Mozart is jazz”, he will tell you that you’re wrong. Miles Davis is jazz.

The song 'Waltzer' from my first church organ concert @ Vinger Chuch, Kongsvinger, June 2014

As a pianist, Andreas Ulvo is already well known on the norwegian and european jazz scene. He has toured all around the world with bands and artists like Mathias Eick Quintet, Frøy Aagre, Eple Trio and Karl Seglem Acoustic Quartet. He is inspired by everything from jazz, classical music, folk music to pop music, and all this music is melted together in his latest release "Softspeaker". Even though Ulvo's music is influenced by a wide range of genres, the final result sounds natural and seamless. Every single note is given the attention it needs, and this often results in meditatively evolving moods.

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I take photos of bands and artists, of people I know, and of people I don't know. And some nature that I like

Sometimes it feels natural to take a step back. After doing several recordings in studios with large grand pianos I felt the time was right to go back to the place it all started, to the house where I grew up, to the old Grotrian-Steinweg piano on which I learned to play. Maybe that is why the music on this record is simpler, more poetic than much of my earlier work. This record was made during two days in May, and if you listen closely you may hear the birds sing and the sound of rain against the window