Producer Siggi Loch's imaginatively curated Jazz at the Berlin Philharmonic series have been a deserved and recurring success, attested by a series of live albums drawn from these events, of which this album is quite possibly the finest. It is a sign of the changing times that liner notes are able to say, “[Norway] is still the spearhead of European jazz, which has long emancipated itself from the motherland US and launched decisive developments of its own.” It is almost 20 years ago since Bugge Wesseltoft's New Conception of Jazz was influential in convincing festival promoters that American artists need not always headline jazz festivals by dint of the large crowds he was attracting at the time. Now, as the sleeve notes remind us, Wesseltoft has just turned 50, and if anything the inherent lyricism of his playing is more intense and more acute as he reveals on ‘Chicken Feathers’. Solveig Slettahjell is one of Norway's prime exhibits in the jazz vocal department, and is here accompanied by her long time pianist Morten Qvenild who directs the collective traffic on a memorable version of ‘Ingen Vinner Frem Til Den Evige Ro’. Few vocalists have the ability to freeze an audience in their seats, and with the right material – her version of ‘Take It With Me’ is a good example – she can be riveting. Qvenild's In the Country has deservedly been picking up accolades for some time now, their lyrical deconstruction one of contemporary jazz's delights. And what of a Norwegian blues musician – well, Knut Reiersrud has been confounding people's expectations for almost two decades now.