Water Fabric Espen Berg

• 1Sun Glacier06:34
• 2Circumzenithal06:16
• 3191411:30
• 4Hydrophobic05:31
• 5Acres of Dew06:23
• 6Duelling Rivers06:25
• 7Triple Point Suite17:45
• Total Runtime01:00:24

Info for Water Fabric

With nine exceptionally strong trio and solo albums Espen Berg (40) has become one of the most central and tone-setting Norwegian jazz musicians today. November 24 marks the release of his new album Water Fabric on Odin Records, which shows completely new sides of Espen as a composer. He has put together a hand-picked ensemble consisting of six high-profile Norwegian musicians with a background in jazz, classical, Norwegian folk music and Indian classical music. This composition reflects Espen's ability to make any musical expression his own, and with Water Fabric he has created a melodious, boundary-breaking, and breathtaking work that both oozes with the joy of playing and also shows a deep respect for musical traditions and craftsmanship.

Water Fabric was originally commissioned by Jazzfest Trondheim in 2020, in collaboration with Maijazz Stavanger and Oslo Jazzfestival, and was premiered to standing ovations at these three festivals in 2022. The title itself embraces broadly, as an analogy to water in all possible states, textures and shades, and it is borrowed from a piece that Espen wrote back in 2005 and later arranged for string quartet. With Water Fabric he revisits the chamber music format, but this time with maturity and countless experiences richer.

In 2017 Espen wrote the commissioned work MAETRIX for the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra - a monstrous work dominated by complex rhythms, but at the same time melodious and inviting. This work laid much of the foundation for the musical development of the Espen Berg Trio and also helped in shaping the music in Water Fabric. In addition, Espen has brought valuable knowledge from his solo project into Water Fabric, which is based exclusively on free improvisation. Several of the compositions in Water Fabric have their roots in spontaneously composed material, which fosters presence, spontaneity and atmosphere, but at the same time is imperfect and unpolished by nature.

Water Fabric was recorded in Rainbow Studio in Oslo in January 2023, and is supported by the Arts Council Norway through Fond for lyd og bilde, and Fond for Utøvende Kunstnere.

Espen Berg is touring Europe and Asia regularly with Espen Berg Trio, as a solo pianist, with Hildegunn Øiseth Quartet, A Tonic For The Troops, and in a duo with Silje Nergaard. In 2022 he released The Trondheim Concert, which was declared one of the most beautiful improvised solo piano concerts of the last decade by UK Vibe, and appointed a natural and worthy successor to Keith Jarrett’s legendary solo concerts by Jazzwise. With his trio he has sold out concert halls in Tokyo, Kyoto, Guangzhou and Athens, and was listed with one of the best releases of 2019 in Downbeat. Espen received Norway’s largest jazz scholarship in 2016, JazZtipendiatet, and he is an official Steinway Artist.

Espen Berg, piano
Harpreet Bansal, violin
Hayden Powell, trumpet, flugelhorn
Ellie Mäkelä, viola
Per Oddvar Johansen, drums
Joakim Munkner, cello

Espen Berg
born June 30th 1983 in Hamar, is a Norwegian pianist and composer. He lives in Trondheim, where he attained a master’s degree at NTNU’s highly acknowledged jazz department in 2008.

Espen grew up in Hamar, Norway, and his parents are also musicians. He has played the piano his whole life and started composing at the age of 6. He didn’t have any formal musical education until age 16, and at that time he also discovered jazz and free improv through his first piano teacher, Helge Lien. Spending most of his time as a youth in his father’s studio, Espen explored a vast variety of genres and styles and started making his own interpretations of the songs that he loved. At NTNU he teamed up with Bendik Giske (sax) and Daniel Herskedal (tuba), and formed the trio Listen in 2002. They won the Hoeilaart Int’l Jazz Competition in 2004 and played concerts in Europe, Asia and America the following eight years, with tours in Syria and Cuba.

In 2011 Espen started working on his solo project. His first solo album, Noctilucent, was released in 2012 and became the starting point for his career as a band leader. Espen Berg Trio was formed in 2014 with fellow band members Bárður Reinert Poulsen (bass) and Simon Olderskog Albertsen (drums), and it has quickly become his main project, working horse and experimental sandbox. The trio is now considered one of the most influential and innovative piano trios from Norway, touring regularly in Europe and Asia. Their fourth album was released in May 2022, featuring prominent guest artists: Mathias Eick (trp), Hanna Paulsberg (ts) and Silje Nergaard (vocal).

In 2016, Espen was awarded Norway’s largest jazz scholarship, JazZtipendiatet, resulting in a commissioned work for the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra called MAETRIX. This work premiered at Molde Int’l Jazz Festival, and featured a 14 piece orchestra with many of the leading jazz musicians from Norway and Sweden. MAETRIX was recorded in Rainbow Studio in Oslo in 2021 and will be released early 2024.

In 2019, Espen stepped up the game and played his first fully improvised piano concert, which was recorded live in Dokkhuset in Trondheim. This recording was later released as The Trondheim Concert (NXN Recordings, 2022) and received overwhelming reviews from all over Europe and in Japan. Espen was also featured with interviews in Jazzwise (UK), Jazz Views (UK), Jazzism (NL), Jazzthing (DE), Pianist (NL and DE), Jazz Critique Magazine (JP) and The Jazz Rag (UK). The Trondheim Concert marks a new path of his solo project, and was shortly followed by the release of The Nidaros Concert (NXN, 2023) and later also The Hamar Concert (NXN, 2023).

In 2020, Espen was commissioned to write a piece for Jazzfest in Trondheim, Maijazz in Stavanger and Oslo Jazz Festival, which he named Water Fabric. This sextet features high profiled Norwegian musicians with different background – from jazz, Nordic folk music and classical Indian music, to European classical music. Water Fabric was recorded in Rainbow Studios in Oslo in 2023, and will be released in November 2023 on Odin Records.

In 2023, Espen was appointed to official Steinway Artist, which consists of 1600 pianists worldwide. Espen is the youngest Norwegian Steinway Artist, and the sixth from his country. He shares this designation with legendary pianists such as Keith Jarrett, Brad Mehldau, Leif Ove Andsnes, Edvard Grieg, Vladimir Horowitz, to name a few.

As a sideman Espen has worked with Hildegunn Øiseth Quartet, Bridges feat. Seamus Blake, A Tonic For the Troops, Anders Grønseth’s Multiverse, Kåre Kolve Quartet, Daniel Herskedal Quintet, Marius Neset and Trondheim Jazz Orchestra and Mathias Eick Quintet. He has a duo with Silje Nergaard which is touring extensively in Norway and Europe, and they released a duo album in 2020 at Sony Music Gmbh.

Espen was appointed to NTNU AMBASSADOR together with his trio in 2016. He received government grants from Arts Council Norway in 2016 to 2018 and in 2021, and was awarded with scholarships and prizes from the city of Trondheim in 2016, and from TONO (Norwegian equiv. to ASCAP) in 2014 and 2016. He has worked in committees at Arts Council Norway (2018-2021) and at Nordic Culture Fund (2020-2022). In 2007 he won the prize for being the best soloist at Hoeilaart International Jazz Contest in Belgium, and he was nominated for the annual solo jazz piano competition at Montreux Jazz Festival in both 2012 and 2013. He has been lecturing at the NTNU jazz department since 2007, working with some of the finest and most creative jazz students in Northern-Europe.

This album contains no booklet.