Swedish bassist, cellist, composer and arranger Lars Danielsson is well-know and admired throughout the International jazz scene for his lyrical playing and strong groove. Born in 1958, he is a musician with particularly broad interests. At the conservatory in Gothenburg he had studied classical cello, before changing to bass and to jazz. As a bassist he has a uniquely rounded sound, which is as lyrical as powerful.

The "Lars Danielsson Quartet" with former Miles Davis saxophonist David Liebman, pianist Bobo Stenson and legendary ECM drummer Jon Christensen has received a lot of recognition and numerous awards during the 18 years of its existence. Danielsson has released ten solo-albums since 1980 with his quartet and guests such as Alex Acuña and John Abercrombie. The Quartet has been a testing ground for Danielsson’s work as a composer and arranger, which has extended over the last years to include both - symphony orchestra and big band music. He has worked with Denmark’s Radio Concert Orchestra as well as the JazzBaltica Ensemble as a composer, arranger and producer.

Lars Danielsson has worked with: Randy and Michael Brecker, John Scofield, Jack DeJohnette, Mike Stern, Billy Hart, Charles Lloyd, Terri Lyne Carrington and Dave Kikoski. He has also been a member of the "Trilok Gurtu Group".

As a producer, Lars Danielsson worked with Cæcilie Norby, Jonas Johansen, the Danish Radio Concert Orchestra and Viktoria Tolstoy.

In 2007, he received a commission for a piece with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestrafeaturing himself as a soloist together with Leszek Moždžer. He has also received a commission from the NDR Big Band and Wolfgang Haffner to write a piece for the JazzBaltica Festival 2007. Furthermore, he has been working with the St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra in collaboration with Vytas Sondeckis and Bugge Wesseltoft.

His 2008 album “Pasodoble” was a huge success. Jazzwise UK wrote about Danielsson’s collaboration with Polish pianist Leszek Moždžer: “A clarity of thought and execution rarely encountered in jazz.”

“Pasodoble” was followed by another collaboration with Leszek Moždžer on the 2009 album “Tarantella”. Once more the album caused enthusiastic reactions by Jazzwise: “Easily Danielsson’s finest album to date, it also numbers among the finest albums in the ACT catalogue.”

On his most recent album “Liberetto”, Lars Daniellson teams up with Armenian piano shooting Star “Tigran”, e.s.t. drummer Magnus Öström guitarist John Paricelli and Trumpeter Arve Henriksen to discovers new musical spaces and the freedom of music between chamber jazz, classic and European folk music.

Magnus Öström was born on May 3rd, 1965 in Skultuna, Sweden as second son to local painter Arne and Siv Öström. His brother Tommy was three years older and influenced Magnus in his early years with his eclectic record collection including Jimmy Hendrix, Deep Purple, Almond Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd. At the age of eight Magnus built his first drumkit out of his fathers empty paintcans and only a year later he started his first band together with a kid from across the street, Esbjörn Svensson. Magnus received his first real drumkit only one year later as a christmas present. Another year later he performed his first concert. The band was called ”Beware Of The Beginners”.
In 1978 his brother took him to a concert of Billy Cobham with John McLaughlin. This experience turned his musical world upside down and got him into jazzrock. Aged 13 to 16 Magnus had several bands simultaneously together with Esbjörn Svensson playing all different styles, from dance-music to punk. From 1981 to 1983 Magnus studied at the music highschool (Gymnasium) in Västerås. During those years Esbjörn and Magnus had their first trio together. From 1983 to 1985 he then studied music at Sjöviks folk high-school.
In 1985 Magnus moved to Stockholm to study at the Royal Conservatory of Music. He immediately started to play in different bands on Stockholm ́s jazz scene. Between 1987 and 1992 he was a constant member of Monica Borrfors band, a well-known Swedish jazz vocalist who played mainly jazz standards and together they toured extensively throughout Sweden and beyond. ”Playing live, especially with a singer is the best school in the world for a young drummer”, he says.
In 1989 after a break of a few years Magnus and Esbjörn hooked up again and started jamming together. They formed a band called ”Stock Street B”. The setup included - amoung other gadgets - samplers and octapads with sampled vocals. ”It was too early for that kind of thing. No one understood what we were doing, really. They thought we were playing to backing-tracks but everything we did was live...!” In 1991 him and Esbjörn started the predecessor to e.s.t. and in 1992 Dan Berglund joined on bass. Together they recorded 12 albums and one concert DVD, toured the world several times over, sold hundreds of thousands of albums, and were titled the ”trio of the decade”. Nowadays e.s.t. are considered to have been the most influential band in jazz in the Noughties and their album ”Live in Hamburg” (ACT 6002-2) has been awarded ”Album of the Decade” by no lesser than the London Times. The career of e.s.t. came to a sudden, tragic end when Esbjörn Svensson died in a scuba diving accident on June 14, 2008.
Three years later, on Februar 25, 2011, Magnus Öström released “Thread of Life” (ACT 9525-2) – his debut as a leader and his first (musical) sign of life after the tragedy. Its haunting, dark music, drawing inspiration from jazz, progressive rock, drum’n’bass and minimal music was Öströms attempt of coping with the huge loss. On the song “Ballad for E”, Magnus Öström and Dan Berglund played together in the studio for the first time after Svenssons death – accompanied by the great e.s.t. fan Pat Metheny.
In July 2011, the German JazzBaltica Festival is paying tribute to Esbjörn Svensson and e.s.t. .
The highlight of the festival is an evening with music by and for Esbjörn Svensson, on which Magnus Öström not only performed with his “Thread of Life” band but also was hosting the programme.
In 2012, Magnus Öström received the „Echo Jazz“, Germany’s most important music award, as „best drummer international“ for „Thread of Life“. His performance of piece “Tears for Esbjörn”, together with pianist Iiro Rantala was an emotional peak of the award ceremony.
Four years after the death of Esbjörn Svensson, on March 30, 2012 with „301“ (ACT 9029-2) a new e.s.t. album was released – with previously unreleased studio material, produced by Magnus Öström and Dan Berglund. The album made it to #53 of the German popcharts and #1 of the jazzcharts. Also, since the release of “Liberetto” (ACT 9520-2) in February 2012, Magnus Öström is a permanent member of the band of bassist Lars Danielsson.

Being one of Norways most promising young talents for over a decade, Mathias Eick moves steadily towards being one of the finest musicians from the Northern regions, regardless of age group and genre. Still only 30 years old, Eick has marvellous range of achievements to show for himself; in 2007 he won the International Jazz Talent, awarded to him by the International Jazz Festivals Organization situated in New York. He then won the Statoil Scholarship in 2009, undoubtedly the largest scholarship in Norway, and he is currently heading for release of his second album on one of the worlds most influential jazz record labels, ECM.
In the meantime Eick keeps himself busy participating on several albums playing either trumpet, double bass, vibraphone, piano, guitar, or in his own words “anything needed.” Some of his collaborators have been, among a vast amount of others, Trondheim Jazz Orchestra and Chick Corea, Iro Haarla, Manu Katché and Jacob Young. Eick is also a member of the Norwegian genre-defying group Jaga Jazzist, a group with which he has performed for many years.
Eicks band is currently a five-piece, featuring two drummers, bass, piano and Eick himself. The lineup changes invariably as all the participating musicians are amongst Norways finest, but for the most part the band consists of Andreas Ulvo (piano), Torstein Lofthus and Gard Nilssen (drums), and Audun Erlien (bass). The music is composed by Eick and pays tribute to both the truly unique Scandinavian soundscape, as well as the lyricism and melancholy of the American master trumpeter Kenny Wheeler.

The uniquely lyrical, liquid and mellifluous sound of Arve Henriksen’s trumpet has had an important supportive role to play on a number of ECM recordings of the last decade. Amongst them – Christian Wallumrød’s “No Birch”, “Sofienberg Variations”, “A Year from Easter” and “The Zoo is Far”, Trygve Seim’s “Different Rivers”, “The Source and Different Cikadas” and “Sangam” , Jon Balke’s “Kyanos”, Sinikka Langeland’s “Starflowers”, Frode Haltli’s “Passing Images”, Arild Andersen’s “Elektra” ... albums which between them represent a very broad range of musical possibilities. In each context, however, Henriksen has proven to be both a highly-distinctive and uncommonly adaptive player. This versatility provides a subtext for the present disc, which pools a shifting cast of creative musicians from diverse genres including jazz, electronica, ambient and classical music and the world of the remix. Singer David Sylvian makes two appearances reading his own texts, Ana Maria Friman sings fragments of William Brooks’s “Anima Mea” and the voices of the Trio Mediaeval emerge, sampled, on “Recording Angel”. Guitarist Eivind Aarset, and drummer Audun Kleive loom out of the mix, and Ståle Storløkken, Arve’s colleague from noise/rock/improv band Supersilent, has a cameo on “Famine’s Ghost”.
“Cartography”, the art of making maps, is an apt title. Recorded in the studio and in concert in Kristiansand, Oslo, Cologne and London it is almost a map of moods, of landscapes and soundscapes for Henriksen to explore. His trumpet floats and hovers over ever-changing territory.
“Over the last few years, “ says Henriksen, “I’ve been trying to find ways of playing that feel right for me and areas of music that interest me enough to keep returning to them. And I’ve been feeling uncomfortable with the idea of ending up playing ‘improvised jazz’. This album is part of a process of going back to go further. For more than twenty years electronics have been part of what I do, and the collaboration with Jan Bang and Erik Honoré has been inspirational. I like very much their way of bringing together acoustic instrument and electronics, their way of building and combining elements, sometimes from different places and times.” He points out that Bang and Honoré draw inspiration from the work of Jon Hassell, who is also a primary influence on Arve’s ‘vocal’ trumpet sound. There is a sense of a cycle of history completing itself - especially with Hassell, Eno and others now contributing to the Punkt festival curated by Bang and Honoré, where ‘live remixing’ is a standard part of the programming. In that sense, “Cartography” belongs to an alternative tradition of music making that includes improvisation and sound-sculpturing, dubs and remixing and awareness of ambience.
It’s also clearly in line with Arve’s own history. The early interest in far eastern sound and the shakuhachi which triggered investigation into new means of tone-production is reflected once more in pieces like “From Birth”. The work methods employed also extend experiments Henriksen and Bang had begun on the album “Chiaraoscuro” issued by Rune Grammofon in 2004.
The association with David Sylvian has been percolating for a few years. Arve has contributed to some of the singer’s work, including his “Nine Horses” project, and Sylvian has utilised samples of Arve’s trumpet in a Japanese art museum installation piece, “When Loud Weather Buffeted Naoshima”. Material from this source was refashioned into “Before and Afterlife, Part 1”: “The first part of this piece is really David’s production: then Jan Bang began adding material.” (As “Cartography”’s associate wordsmith, Sylvian also provided titles for the tracks here).
Several of the pieces began life as improvisations, “but there were many ways of working. There are also layers of composed music... including sketches Jan Bang sent me as computer file back at the beginning of the project.” Being open to contingency was part of the plan; the work, Henriksen figured, should develop organically. “Recording Angel” is one such instance. Bang had been working with arranger Vytas Sondeckis on another project and began to develop it experimentally. Having recently recorded the Trio Mediaeval (the three singers are also part of a new quintet with Henriksen and Bang), he integrated the voices singing the mediaeval song “Oi me lasso” into his mix. “It fit perfectly into this new soundscape,” Henriksen says.
Currently Henriksen, Bang and friends are exploring ways to bring this music to the stage.
“Cartography” was launched with a release concert in Oslo on October 17 2008.
Arve Henriksen studied at the Trondheim Conservatory from 1987-1991, and has worked as a freelance musician since 1989. “Cartography” is his first recording as a leader for ECM.

Grégory Privat is a French jazz pianist who was born in Martinique (French West Indies) in 1984. His earliest musical influence was his father, José Privat who was the pianist of the famous Caribbean band Malavoi. José Privat who was a self-taught pianist encouraged Grégory to take piano lessons. In this way, Grégory began to play the piano at the age of six with a private teacher. He studied classical music for ten years and at barely 16 years old, he began composing music for the section of his high school where he became one of the most active members. He dropped out of classical music and moved to jazz and improvisations.

b. 21 March 1960, Buenos Aires, Argentina. From the age of 10 Miller was raised in Racine, Wisconsin, where, five years later, he began playing guitar. He studied formally both in the USA and in England. It was at London’s Guildhall School of Music that he met fellow students Nigel Kennedy and Mike Lindup (later of Level 42). In the mid- to late 80s Miller played a US tour with World Party, following that by playing lead guitar with King Swamp. This was succeeded by engagements with Chrissie Hynde and Julia Fordham. In 1989 he worked on Phil Collins’ … But Seriously, followed two years later by Sting’s The Soul Cages. Miller also worked with Sting in 1993 on the bestselling Ten Summoners Tales, toured extensively and also co-wrote with him, ‘Shape Of My Heart’. Among numerous other artists with whom Miller has recorded are Bryan Adams, the Chieftains, Sheryl Crow, Jason Donovan, Peter Gabriel, John McLaughlin and Rod Stewart. Although much of his career has been spent in electrified rock bands, Miller’s playing of the acoustic guitar is subtly inflected with the music of South America, a quality which adds pleasing a resonance seldom achieved by his contemporaries.