Jazz

Silje Nergaard - A Thousand True Stories (2010)

2013-02-03T17:13:58Z

Silje Nergaard - A Thousand True Stories (2010)


01. Based On A Thousand True Stories
02. Dreamers At Heart
03. Come In From The Garden
04. Frozen
05. Wayside Song
06. Nightroad
07. Old Madrid
08. While You Were Gone
09. Laura

Musicians:
Silje Nergaard - Vocals, kantele/backing vocals
Helge Lien - piano
Finn Guttormsen- Bass
Jarle Vespestad- drums
Håvar Bendiksen- guitars/backing vocals
Mathias Eick- trumpet
Fredrik Otterstad, - backing vocals
Heine Totland - backing vocals

Metropole Orchestra, Holland
Vince Mendoza, arranger/conductor

Great artists don’t arrive on the conveyor belt of weekly TV talent shows. They come once or twice in a generation and follow their own unique path, which makes them so special. The award winning Norwegian singer Silje Nergaard is one such artist, and her latest album A Thousand Stories is the finest realisation of her internationally acclaimed singing and songwriting artistry to date.

Recorded in August 2008 and produced by Silje herself aided by Pål Svenre, Silje holds centre stage with her regular group with Helge Lien on piano – “How they melt into my songs” she says – plus the internationally acclaimed Dutch Metropole Orchestra.

With stunning orchestral arrangements by Grammy winning composer, arranger and conductor Vince Mendoza (Joni Mitchell, Björk, Elvis Costello, Herbie Hancock) on seven tracks, A Thousand Stories is the sort of ambitious and personalised statement that comes with confidence and experience. “I feel at home in Silje’s music,” says Mendoza, “it resonates with my basic spirit and I think Silje trusts that I’m going to dance with her in her musical world.”

“It’s been a dream come true to work with Vince, who really gets inside my music” says Silje, who when she heard Mendoza’s arrangement of “Chinese Café” on Joni Mitchell’s album Travelogue was inspired her to invite him to contribute two arrangements to her critically acclaimed 2007 album Darkness Out of the Blue, so setting in motion a chain of events that culminated in A Thousand Stories.

In explaining her approach to the album, Silje says, “Music is about story telling. At least the way I hear it. I really want to reach audiences, and tell them stories they can feel, and connect to their lives.” You only have to listen to the title track to hear what she means. It tells the poignant story of lovers growing apart, a relationship that’s loosing its sparkle. “It’s not the only couple it’s happened to,” explains Silje, “It’s based on a thousand true stories.”

In what is possibly the best marriage of lyric content and melody to be found on any of her albums, Silje’s songs have now acquired a universality that makes them sound like tomorrows standards today. This is down in no small part to her long-time musical partnership with lyricist Mike McGurk. “I’ve worked with Mike for ten years now, and this relationship is growing,” says Silje. “I am really lucky to have such a wise lyricist who tries to read my mind, although this time it was the hardest we’ve ever worked on my songs. I really wanted to nail the stories, and the lyrics were changing right up to the last day of recording.”

A Thousand Stories is an album that reveals both Silje’s personal and artistic growth, with the Metropole Orchestra underlining her musical identity with the kind of depth that only a top-notch musical organisation can do. Subtle, sophisticated and melodically accessible, it is the product of a musical vision that follows its own path, a unique voice that has created its own space in today’s crowded music scene.

Yet this album is not just the culmination of the months it took to realise a dream, it goes back much further than that. It goes back to when Silje first heard singers like Ella Fitzgerald on her parent’s record player as a child, to when she first started singing and writing her own songs. It goes back to her debut at 16 on the Molde Jazz Festival stage, and her debut single that in 1990 that achieved a top 40 placing on the UK pop charts. And it is the culmination of the eleven critically acclaimed albums that preceded it. True artistry, you see, adds up to much, much more than getting the most votes on a TV talent show. ---Stuart Nicholson, soundcloud.com

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Silje Nergaard - Darkness Out Of Blue (2007)

2013-01-25T21:04:29Z

Silje Nergaard - Darkness Out Of Blue (2007)


1 Paper Boats 4:01
2 Darkness out of Blue 5:23
3 The Diner 4:46
4 Wastelands 5:26
5 When Judy Falls 6:00
6 The Beachcomber 6:35
7 What Might Have Been 4:26
8 Aren't You Cured Yet 4:41
9 Who Goes There 4:07
10 Before You Called Me Yours 4:29
11 How Are You Gonna' Deal with It 5:34
12 Let Me Be Troubled 6:56

Personnel: 
Silje Nergaard (background vocals); 
Bjorn Charles Dreyer (acoustic guitar, electric guitar, background vocals); 
Hallgrim Bratberg (acoustic guitar); 
Finn Guttormsen (dobro, acoustic bass, electric bass, background vocals); 
Sidsel Walstad (harp); 
Bo Söderström, Jan Isaksson, Monika Stanikowska, Torbjörn Bernhardsson, Per Hammarstrom, Christian Bergqvist, Martin Stensson, Dag Alin, Jannika Gustafsson (violin); 
Hans Ĺkeson (viola); 
Monica Jönsson, Astrid Lindell (cello); 
Magnus Lindgren (flute, clarinet, baritone saxophone); 
Helge Lien (piano, Fender Rhodes piano, background vocals); 
Pĺl Svenre (piano, background vocals); 
Ingalill Hillerud (double bass); 
Jarle Vespestad (drums, background vocals); 
Torstein Lofthus (drums); 
André Ferrari (shaker, tambourine, percussion); 
Nana Hedin, Heine Totland (background vocals).

2007 album from the Norwegian Jazz vocalist, the follow-up to her 2004 album Nightwatch. Silje has been through many changes in the interim including working with an entirely new band that Nergaard says challenges her to leave comfortable warm waters and dive into the deep end, expanding her musical horizons and artistry. 12 tracks including 'Paper Boats', 'Wastelands' and 'What Might Have Been'. ---Editorial Reviews

This Norwegian songbird started out as a wannabe pop singer (she scored a minor UK chart entry for EMI in 1990 with the single 'Tell Me Where You're Going') before cannily re-inventing herself as a jazz chanteuse a few years ago. Blossom Dearie aside, Nergaard's fragile, child-like voice is not the type normally associated with jazz and probably accounts for her reluctance to sing standards. Instead, she prefers to pen her own material with the help of long-time collaborator, lyricist Mike McGurk. Over the course of three albums ('Port Of Call,' 'At First Light,' and 'Nightwatch') Nergaard has formed a potent songwriting partnership with McGurk, and on this fourth opus for Emarcy, their collaboration has undoubtedly reached a new creative peak. Nergaard's forte is dreamy, ruminative jazz-pop ballads, of which there are plenty here. 'Wastelands' is exquisite, closely followed by 'The Beachcomber' and the album's mournful finale, 'Let Me Be Troubled.' As good as these are, they don't come close to matching 'When Judy Falls,' a stupendous uptempo slice of catchy soulful pop that mutates into an orchestrated jazz-funk groove that sounds like it was produced by the Mizell brothers back in the 70s. Undoubtedly Nergaard's most impressive work yet. --- Bill Buckley, soulandjazzandfunk.com

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Silje Nergaard - Japanese Blue (2020)

2020-07-15T19:37:16Z

Silje Nergaard - Japanese Blue (2020)


1 	Be Still My Heart (Acoustic Version) 	5:53
2 	Based On A Thousand True Stories (Acoustic Version) 	5:56
3 	The Waltz (Acoustic Version) 	4:03
4 	I Don't Wanna See You Cry (Acoustic Version) 	5:21
5 	Mercy Street (Acoustic Version) 	5:16
6 	Lullaby to Erle (Acoustic Version) 	5:09
7 	Love of My Life (Acoustic Version) 	4:05
8 	Japanese Blue (Acoustic Version) 	6:23
9 	En Og En (Acoustic Version) 	5:11
10 	What a Wonderful World (Acoustic Version) 	5:44
11 	Jeg Vil Takke Livet (Acoustic Version) 	4:55

Silje Nergaard, vocals
Espen Berg, piano

The Norwegian Silje Nergaard released her first album Tell Me Where You're Going with the jazz guitarist Pat Metheny in the title song thirty years ago, after her first successful appearance at a jazz festival five years earlier. This pop album has been followed by sixteen other albums to date, some of which have been attributed by critics to pop and some to jazz in particular. These classifications would have been completely okay if it weren't for the sometimes-unpleasant tension between the two genres, which in the case of Silje Nergaard has been attributed negatively to the singer from jazz circles time and again. Jazz with pop interspersion, that is not possible. Rather, it is true that such a prejudice is not possible, since one or the other jazz style has always been open to pop influences. Just think of the various songbooks of Ella Fitzgerald, who was never resented for this cheating. On the contrary. So, let's be happy that Silje Nergaard is following in the footsteps of the great lady of jazz, and despite all her affinity to jazz, she doesn't shut herself off from pop. The continuing international success that the Norwegian enjoys is proof that her fans have no objection to pop blasts in her songs.

The Norwegian soprano has a radiant bright soprano, which even after many years has lost nothing of its incredible suppleness. Because of the seemingly effortless lightness of the sound production, this voice hides the fact that a lot of intensive work is necessary to achieve this result. No doubt: this lady can sing. ---highresaudio.com

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