Double bill: Pocket Corner and Björkenheim/Parker/Drake

Didrik Ingvaldsen is the man with the horn who heads up this local jazz posse. Together they make up the best of Stavanger’s talent. Pocket Corner are presently a quintet, stretching their flexible muscles in the borderlands of composed and improvised sounds, from tight grooves to open, airy vistas. But most notably of all, Pocket Corner have painstakingly hewn out their own niche in Norwegian jazz and are therefore fully worthy of a listen on home turf.

Line-up: Didrik Ingvaldsen - trumpet, Glenn B. Henriksen - alto sax, Vidar Schanke - guitar, Mikaell Olsson - bass, Ståle Birkeland - drums

The Björkenheim, Parker and Drake Trio, represents the very best in modern improvised music: naked, energetic and uncompromising. The band explores musical textures in the realms of the percussive, the free, the melodic and the outright brazen and shrill. The resulting aural picture is full of igneous intensity and will in all likelihood take listeners on a frenetic journey where landing on one’s feet will take some doing.

Line-up: Raoul Björkenheim - guitar/viola da gamba, William Parker - bass, Hamid Drake - drums

Translation by Erik Forster