Mathilde Grooss Viddal - Notre Dame: Meditations And Prayers (CD)

Release Date: 02/05/21

Old folk songs and psalms as inspiration for contemporary instrumental chamber jazz with a timeless quality

Listening to Mathilde Groos Viddal's Meditations and Prayers, the listener may well feel there is a timeless quality to the music. The majority of the tracks are entitled 'Reflection' and 'Psalm,' and these two dimensions come together on 'Reflection V - Psalm 3.' These references to meditation and afterthought are also explorations of musical material, some of which has its origin centuries ago. The musicians explore this material in a soft-spoken, but at the same time intense, manner. Soft-spoken is obviously not quite the right term, as there is no speech here, although there is communication. The musical voices establish something deeply meaningful. And I can only guess that those listeners who recognize the songs used, will relate the meanings of the music with the non-heard lyrics of tradition.

Much of the album was recorded in Færvik kirke, a wooden church on the island of Tromøya, where Grooss Viddal's foremothers where waiting for heir husbands, sons, and brothers to come home from the sea. In many ways, the album feels like one long sermon, where different nuances of thought are hinted at, giving ample room for the listener to sink back into her own thoughts and reactions. Here, too, the echo of tradition gives depth to a feeling of timelessness, of being connected to foremothers and forefathers, of listening to history and tradition.
On this album, the instruments are affirming a core of human existence, giving us as listeners space to listen and mediate on our place in the world, a place where the echoes of past days are still here, and can be heard at each and every reiterations of a music with a long history, a music that in one sense is old, but in another sense is always also current.

Mathilde Grooss Viddal - Bb clarinet, bass clarinet, sopran sax, tenor sax
Hayden Powell - trumpet
Børge-Are Halvorsen - tenor sax
Øyvind Brække - trombone
Per Willy Åserud - trumpet & electronics on three tracks