Ralph Peterson 35th Annual Student Music Awards - Downbeat

European Scene | BY PEtER MARgASAK
umlaut founder’s Career Punctuated by World travels
Swedish bassist Joel Grip didn’t
grow up in a musical household,
but he says both of his parents encouraged
him to pursue his instrument
when he first picked up the
bass as a teenager. But when one
examines Grip’s accomplishments
over the last decade or so, it’s his
mother’s organizational skills that
become clear.
“I think I learned that from
her,” Grip said. “From a young
age I realized that if you want
something to be made, you better
do it yourself. You can’t sit around
and wait for someone to call you.”
In 2002, at the mere age of 20,
Grip started Hagenfesten, a jazz
and improvised music festival in
the rustic Swedish village of Dala-
Floda (population: 90). The event
will celebrate its 11th edition in August
of this year. A few years later,
while studying at the Peabody Institute
in Baltimore, he launched
Umlaut Records, which has quietly
become one of Europe’s most interesting
free-jazz labels. Grip also
founded Public Health Music, a
social initiative aimed at using the
arts to save homeless kids from a
life of crime and drugs.
For Grip, it all started with play-
Caught
Voss, a lovely and humble lakefront- and
fjord-hugging town in western Norway,
remains a critical feature on the Norwegian
jazz cultural landscape.
In this year’s Vossa Jazz program, the
fifth run by director Trude Storheim, matters
of artistic balance, of carefully blending
commerciality and artistic chance-taking,
were in typical high form. This festival
doesn’t always have a strong American jazz
presence, and this year’s New York link rested
solely on Marc Ribot’s feisty, tough and
riffy band Really the Blues. What Vossa Jazz
does specialize in is Scandinavian jazz offerings
hard to catch stateside. The high points
from that geo-cultural quarter this year
included the electro-acoustic ambience of
Norwegian trumpeter-texturalist Nils Petter
Molvær. Molvær’s trio (with guitarist Stian
Westerhus and drummer Erland Dahlen) created
an epically atmospheric, voodoo-Miles-
16 DoWNBEAt JUNE 2012
PATRiCk dESMEdT
Joel grip
ing music, a practice he remains
deeply involved in by playing regularly
in numerous configurations.
As a teenager, he said he
struggled with the rigid orthodoxies
of music education but he
experienced a sense of liberation
after encountering the music of
Swedish reedist Mats Gustafsson
when he was 16.
“I felt a joy and a freedom in his
playing that really opposed what I
had been taught in school,” Grip
said. Not long after finishing high
school, Grip heard a solo album by
fellow bassist Michael Formanek.
After an initial email exchange with
Formanek, Grip decided to head
to Baltimore to study with him.
Spending two years in Baltimore
opened up Grip’s musical horizons,
and the first Umlaut recordings
included musicians that he
met there. The label’s first release
was a trio recording featuring Grip,
saxophonist Gary Thomas and
drummer Devin Gray. Grip left in
2005 and spent the next three
years traveling the globe with his
bass.
“I think it was the most important
part of my education—although
I think I’m still learning and I
hope I always will be,” Grip said. He
spent time in Japan, China, Costa
Rica, across the United States and
in Eastern Europe. Many of the
people he met remain close collaborators,
whether they are butoh
dancers or noise musicians.
In 2008, Grip finally settled
in Paris, where he eventually developed
a large-enough cast of
collaborators to run Umlaut as a
collective. Umlaut boasts bases in
Paris, Stockholm, and Berlin, has
presented festivals in each location
and has produced two dozen
releases thus far.
“When I play, and it feels very
good, it’s the feeling of just taking
part in something,” Grip said.
“You’re not controlling and the
Bold Risk-taking Elevates Vossa Jazz
goes-Nordic sonic canvas.
For this year’s commissioned work, saxophonist-composer
Karl Seglem unveiled his
long, impressionistic-waxing suite Tingingsverket
‘Som Spor,’ which massaged the ear
nicely but lacked much substance.
Opening the festival proper was another
Scandinavian admixture, with fine and flexible
Danish pianist Carsten Dahl joined by
improvisation is just happening by
itself. Your presence is important,
the audience is important, your
playmates are important, and it’s
collective work, just like running
this label.”
In addition to releasing new
music—including Grip’s new solo
bass album Pickelhaube and A
Nest At The Junction Of Paths,
a superb collection by the New
Songs which features singer Sofia
Jernberg and guitarist David
Stackenäs from Sweden, pianist
Eve Risser from France, and guitarist
Kim Myhr from Norway—
Umlaut has also started issuing
some archival titles, including
a brilliant four-CD box of music
by pianist Per Henrik Wallin and
Sven-Åke Johansson, and a forthcoming
set by Johansson and
German pianist Alexander von
Schlippenbach.
Despite the growing notice—
both for the label and his playing—Grip
refuses to take it easy.
“We like to play in places where
this music usually isn’t played,”
he said. “I’ve noticed people are
so much more receptive in places
like Serbia, Kosovo, Ukraine or Poland,
with an energetic audience.”
Vossa Jazz festival
Norway’s bassist-of-note Arild Andersen
and drummer Jon Christensen. If there was
a prominent unsung-hero performance this
year, it had to be the rare appearance of seasoned
and mysterious Finnish saxophone legend
Juhani Aaltonen, whose show in the intimate
Osasalen room (in Voss’ Ole Bull Music
Academy) was a stunner, in ways cathartic
and contemplative. —Josef Woodard
SiGvoR MAlA