I just started a collaboration with the fantastic sax player and composer Seamus Blake. Here’s a recording from Rainbow Studio of us playing freely improvised. This is from a session with the quintet BRIDGES together with Hayden Powell, Jesper Bodilsen and Anders Thorén. The following day we headed to Trondheim and played a duo concert at Antikvariatet, and recorded more in Øra Studio. Expect to hear more soon!

We only had ONE SHOT, one take, before the sun set. The weather on this side of Lofoten was perfect – no wind and totally clear. A long working day had come to an end, and we were really happy with the recording outside Henningsvær, but I had this location in mind for days and it would be silly to drive just past it on the way back to Leknes. I’m very happy we went there!

The sun was hanging low, shining directly into the valley nearby Unstad. We went up on this old carriage road, high above the tunnel leading to the beach further down. The clock was well beyond 11 PM and we only had a few minutes until darkness. In only a couple of minutes we were ready to roll. We had to hold back when playing this quite mellow tune, because the kick of doing this upon a mountain in Lofoten, in near-midnight-sun, amongst sheep was nearly overwhelming. After this one take happening, André Løyning managed to get some nice drone footage as well, and we could call it a day. BIG THANKS to Arts Council Norway for making this possible, and to Åse Andreassen and Knut Abrahamsen for helping us out big time.

ENJOY our new video from Ballstad, Lofoten. Big thanks to one-man-movie-maker André Løyning. This song, “MAETRIX”, is originally a part of my commissioned work to the fabulous Trondheim Jazz Orchestra – which will be touring Norway next week!

As the first in a series of videos, here’s “XIII” from our upcoming album as a live recording from the beautiful islands Lofoten in Norway:

We have also made a brand new Facebook page for the trio: www.facebook.com/espenbergtrio. Please like and share!