Ketil Bjørnstad

Ketil Bjørnstad, a multi-talented Norwegian artist described by the Guardian as “a cultural prodigy”, was born in 1952 in Oslo. He trained initially as a classical pianist and made his debut with the Oslo Philharmonic at the age of 16, playing Bartók’s third piano concerto. Exposure to the music of Miles Davis and Terje Rypdal converted him to progressive jazz and he made his first recording, with a quartet that included Jon Christensen and Arild Andersen, in 1973. Another 20 years would pass before he came to ECM, with Water Stories, a collaboration with Rypdal and Christensen. In 1994, with the addition of US cellist David Darling, this would grow into a quartet which released The Sea and The Sea II.  Jazz Journaldescribed the band's sound as "quintessential ECM tone poem music”. The pianist’s partnership with Darling has also produced duo albums such as Epigraphs and The River, as has the association with Rypdal (Life in Leipzig).
  Bjørnstad is also a bestselling and widely translated novelist, and although the composer long kept these two creative currents apart, in recent years there has been much more overt cross-fertilisation.  A Passion for John Donne, released in 2014, is an ambitious work inspired by the great English Metaphysical poet who has fascinated the composer for decades. A previous song cycle of Donne settings featured on the album, The Light. The double CD Vinding’s Musictakes the listener into the heart of Bjørnstad’s literary world: it is a sort of “literary soundtrack” to his trilogy of novels about a young Norwegian pianist, Aksel Vinding.