Nils Landgren & Jan Lundgren: Kristallen

Rating: ★★★

Record and Artist Details

Musicians:

Nils Landgren (tr, voc)
Jan Lundgren (p)

March/2020

Media Format:

CD

Catalogue Number:

ACT 9628-2

RecordDate:

26-27 March 2018

Swedish trombonist (and vocalist) Nils Landgren’s musical world has long stretched stylistically from jazz deep into R&B and funk; Landgren’s Funk Unit has been an enduring entity, tracing its beginnings to the early 1990s. On this ‘Duo Art’ disc with Swedish pianist Jan Lundgren, however, the beat is pared back: there’s groove in Lundgren’s fingers when he raps out Lennon and McCartney’s ‘I Will’ for Landgren to trill the words out over with huskily romantic feeling, but the project is perhaps more closely defined by the traditional ‘Byssan Lull’, a beautiful, bluesy take on a Swedish folk tune with moments of crystalline stillness – hence the album title, presumably. Lennon and McCartney return as songwriters for ‘Norwegian Wood’, which modulates between insouciant carefreeness and introspective complexity. And then there’s the consistently lovely interplay between Landgren and Lundgren, not least on the two tracks written by piano greats: ‘Country’ by Keith Jarrett and ‘The Wedding’ by Abdullah Ibrahim.

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