Á

Vocalist Ellen Andersson’s new
album is titled I’ll Be Seeing You.
MEHMET ALI SANLIKOL
Grooving Across Cultures
ELLEN ANDERSSON
Leaving Spaces
SATU KNAPE
In the lobby of Stockholm’s Grand Central
Scandic Hotel, singer Ellen Andersson, 25,
sits with her guitarist and main collaborator,
Anton Forsberg. Their youthful faces suggest
a new spirit in jazz, one that reminds that
age isn’t everything—especially when it comes
to standards.
On her excellent new album, I’ll Be Seeing
You (Prophone/Swedish Jazz), Andersson
interprets rare gems like the title song but also
“Everything I Love” and “Gloomy Sunday” (a
tune strongly associated with Billie Holiday).
Her depth charges of vocalese as well as lyrical
phrasing may cause listeners to rethink how
standards, post-Diana Krall, can be sung. And
her interaction with the band is a major part of it.
The other members of her quartet are bassist
Hannes Jonsson and drummer Sebastian
Brydniak, and the special guests sitting in on the
recording sessions were Swedish trumpeter Peter
Asplund and Danish saxophonist Oilly Wallace.
Andersson’s career path was set at a tender age.
“I was introduced to jazz by my father,” she says.
“There were a lot of records at home. I was struck
by the swing, and I felt instantly that [becoming
a singer] was something that I would like to
do. That goes way back, to maybe when I was 6.
The voice has always been natural to me, and I’ve
always felt it was really natural to hum; I never
really wanted to play an instrument.”
There was a period, between high school and
college, when Andersson started to develop her
voice in the context of ensemble playing and
working with others. That constituted the bulk
of her musical training.
Andersson says that the members of her
band clicked right from the start: “Someone
from the group got a gig at a Christmas fair
or something. We were going to play some
Christmas jazz outside. Somehow, we instantly
felt like we knew each other musically; we produced
the sounds that we all really liked. And
from there, it just went on. That was in 2013. …
We wanted to have a quartet with a guitar player
and not a piano player because it would leave a lot
of space. And it’s somewhat different from what
a lot of vocalists do. There tends to be a piano
player all the time; whereas with a guitarist, that
leaves more space in the group that makes for a
bigger responsibility for everyone.”
Regarding his collaborations with
Andersson, Forsberg says, “Ellen provides a
lot of the energy and the ideas, which I could
never think of in a million years. We want to
put our own touch on the music. She is such an
of-the-moment person. There’s a [section] on
‘A Day In The Life Of A Fool,’ where Ellen said,
‘What if the intro was like a Bach thing with the
saxophone and the guitar sharing the space and
equally communicating?’”
The two musicians are also in Touché, a
group of 12 singers from Copenhagen referred to
as an a cappella vocal big band.
“I’ve always seen the voice as just another
instrument,” Andersson says. “To me, it’s really
important that we try to change the tradition
with the vocalist singing the melodies, then waiting
for the guys to burn, and then singing the
melody again.
“It’s important to me to be part of [how] the
music is performed all the way, with my solos on
the same terms as the other musicians, but also
being in charge of the musical direction and the
dynamics.”
—John Ephland
FEBRUARY 2017 DOWNBEAT 23