Echoes

Air and Fire

‘The breath goes not merely as far as the man of material science knows. He knows only the vibrations of the air, going out and coming in, and he sees no further. Besides this there is pulsation: the beating of the heart and head, the pulse, all these keep a rhythm. Man very rarely thinks about what depends on this rhythm. The whole life depends on it!’

– Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927): The Mysticism of Sound and Music

By Christian Munch-Hansen

A newborn child pushes its way from the swimming foetal state into the world, where it takes its first inhalations and exhalations. Often with sound. It wails its way into life. A birth is a creation, as the philosopher Hannah Arendt has reflected upon in connection with her concept of ‘natality’, which in a broader sense is about possibilities, creativity and hope.

It is the miraculous thing we do throughout life: draw air into our lungs and respire. The word ‘inspiration’ is precisely the same as inhaling and filling the lungs with oxygen. This must resonate with any musician, especially if one plays a wind instrument, as is the case with composer and saxophonist Lars Møller. Throughout his career spanning more than 30 years, he has expanded his musical expression as an instrumentalist and orchestral composer, stretched between the West and the East, between Scandinavian thoughtfulness, robust American jazz and emotive Indian modalities and rhythmic patterns.

Lars Møller calls this release Echoes, for the music is the ‘reverberation’ of the artistic, human and spiritual encounter that took place back in 2019 between the composer and conductor, NDR Bigband’s colouristic orchestra and trumpeter Palle Mikkelborg’s soulful presence.

But the music is also an ‘echo’ of deeper tracks in Lars Møller’s artistic career, including the compositional stepping stones that lead back to composer and arranger Bob Brookmeyer in particular, the intense immersion in American jazz and Indian music that carries forward the legacy of John Coltrane, and the immersion in meditation and breathing, which has led Lars Møller to also incorporate meditation into his musical work today.
 

Palle Mikkelborg in front of the NDR Bigband © Axel Dürr

With Echoes, one can say that something appears in a new way in Lars Møller’s orchestral music or at least becomes more unfolded than before. Namely, the contrast between, on the one hand, the spaciousness and air in the subdued and improvised passages, centred around Palle Mikkelborg’s free and airborne playing (in several places in lively dialogue with pianist Florian Weber), and on the other hand, the condensed compositional patterns and orchestrations with both dancing pulse and tonal finesse.

In other words, it is music that contains both air and fire. As one of the four elements, air can be understood alchemically as the budding spring, static, misty and connected with timelessness, spiritual openness and presence. These are qualities one hears in Møller’s and the orchestra’s opening of Salt and especially in Mikkelborg’s trumpet voice, which captures the sound of wind and expresses being in the moment. As Møller recalls from the initial rehearsals: ‘I clearly remember the moment when we played together with the whole band for the first time. Palle grasped that space, Florian joined in, and a magical door opened.’

Following this is fire, which is associated with summer and heat, but also dynamics, tension and action, elements that unfold in several passages in Møller’s energetic orchestral music. In Salt and in the suite Echoes of India , one can not only imagine the profound, spiritual India, but also the colourful and rhythmically pulsating India with its spices, class divisions and busy streets, where growth, slums and poverty are allowed to flow side by side with a karmic shrug of the shoulders.

Salt begins with a humming raga atmosphere. Møller is the first soloist (the only place on the album) and here uses his tenor saxophone as a shehnai, the traditional oboe-like reed instrument, which he has previously studied in New Delhi. The winding melodic lines and small displacements are based on the melancholically reflective raga ‘Todi’, a pentatonic raga traditionally played in the morning. This is not something you just play on a tenor sax, and Møller has spent years refining this technique. The music gradually transforms into a rhythmic orchestral arrangement, based on an Indian seven-beat rhythm (‘rupak taal’), while the drone is maintained (for a full nine minutes). Salt can thus also be seen as a variation of the type of orchestral composition that builds on a ‘pedal point’ with examples dating back to Pete Rugolo’s Mirage (1950) and in works by classical composers such as Mahler, Scriabin, Stravinsky and Shostakovich.

Dynamically, Salt is like a slow wave rising. This brings forward the theme in the title with a reflection on the Indian politician and activist Mahatma Gandhi and his Salt March in 1930, which was an action against the British colonial rule’s monopoly on salt production. The march was a political masterstroke because it exposed the moral collapse of the then British colonial rule when the English brutally cracked down on the peaceful demonstrators. Gandhi’s civil disobedience and non-violent strategy had far-reaching consequences as inspiration for, among others, Martin Luther King in the USA.

Brazilian Aria also contains a human perspective. The music has grown in the shadow of Brazil’s slave past, which the country shares with many other nations (including Denmark) that likewise have slave skeletons in their closets. The melody comes from a well-known Brazilian folk song, which was reportedly sung by enslaved Brazilians when they witnessed the punishment of other slaves. Pain and suffering are thus the subtext of the beautiful melody, which composer Heitor Villa-Lobos also used, and which Lars Møller first reworked in connection with his collaboration with Egberto Gismonti in Copenhagen in 2019. In this recording, NDR Bigband creates an airy and wistful polyphonic expression. Palle Mikkelborg is a fragile melody bearer, and Florian Weber contributes a strong and poetic piano solo. The particularly luminous sound universe brings to mind Gil Evans, and in the orchestral build-up of tension under the piano solo, Møller is inspired by Maria Schneider and her arrangement of the main theme from the film Spartacus (1960).

The three-part suite Echoes of India is the musical focal point of the album. Palle Mikkelborg opens ‘Part I, Hommage’ with infinity as space. It is a spellbinding introduction that sets the scene before the orchestra’s rhythm section carries ostinato and pulse forward with almost ceremonial reverence. The modal and melodic foundation of the music is the light and lyrical raga ‘Durga’ (possibly the raga Ravi Shankar showed John Coltrane, who used it in the piece India in 1961). It is felt in the brass’s major key sounds: an atmosphere of growing trust and confidence, emphasised in Møller’s arrangement with the horns’ lively melodic wave movements. Towards the end, the movement is taken over by a dark, rock-influenced ostinato, for the concept of the ‘Durga’ also contains a more aggressive side as the name of an Indian goddess of war riding on a lion.

‘Part II, Transition’ offers something big and unexpected that no one could have calculated in advance: an improvisation between Palle Mikkelborg and Florian Weber, who play out a long opening that constitutes a composition in itself. Imperceptibly, the music glides into Møller’s beautiful ballad. One should be aware of the last couple of minutes, where the old master arranger Gil Evans emerges as a blurred historical figure in the brass sounds. This is a conscious move on Møller’s part, and it reminds us of Gil Evans and Miles Davis’s legendary collaborations. Mikkelborg managed to work with both of them; in the 70s and 80s, he occasionally played with Gil Evans Orchestra, and in 1984–85 he wrote and recorded the orchestral masterpiece Aura for – and with – Miles Davis as soloist.

Part III, Passage’ is a short movement with clear rhythmic appeal, driven forward by Morten Lund’s elegant and energetic drumming. There is dynamic development in the brass, whose melodic figures bud in motivic variations. Once again, the modal drone character with roots in raga music is emphasised. Here, just a taste of the music’s sense of eternity is given, and with Mikkelborg’s concluding notes, wrapped in spatial resonance, it seems to fade into the universe like a space probe of sound and air.

The album concludes with one of Lars Møller’s most well-known compositions, Folk Song No. 1, which is based on the Danish song ‘Marken er mejet’ (‘The Field Is Harvested’). Møller originally wrote the arrangement for the European Jazz Youth Orchestra in 2006 but has since used it in many contexts and won an international award with the composition. In this revised arrangement with NDR Bigband, the music’s flow of joy and energy is emphasised, which also suits the original folk song’s celebration of harvest time with song and dance. Gabor Bolla unfolds the theme with a sparkling solo on tenor saxophone that moves the air.

In a way, we are back at the beginning. Playing the saxophone and making sound is ‘basically breathing’, says Lars Møller and elaborates: ‘As an orchestra, you also breathe together and intonate sonically together. You create an element of fundamental human togetherness and presence. And then something happens to the space.’

Christian Munch-Hansen (b. 1969) is a music journalist, author and teacher. He has worked as a music critic for several Danish newspapers. He is the author of, among others, By af jazz(2008),Musical Dream Machine(2014),Forvandlinger(2022) and Lyden af Solen (2024).

© Axel Dürr

A personal note

By Lars Møller

In the creation of this album, I have been privileged with invaluable inspiration and support from a range of musical collaborators and traditions. The music is imbued with Palle Mikkelborg’s profound musical spirit, which has been a driving force throughout the project.

Salt draws on the Indian morning raga ‘Todi’, which I became acquainted with in the 1990s during my studies of the reed instrument shehnai under the tutelage of masters Pandit Anant Lal and Pandit Daya Shankar in Delhi. The opening bass ostinato of the piece is a contribution from my long-time musical partner, guitarist Thor Madsen.

Brazilian Aria is based on a Brazilian folk melody, whose beauty and historical depth were revealed to me by composer and pianist Egberto Gismonti. The same melody has previously inspired the composer Heitor Villa-Lobos.

Echoes of India is a three-part tribute to Indian music. The first part, ‘Hommage’, draws its melodic material from raga ‘Durga’, whose inner life was unfolded to me by my Indian musical half-brother, shehnai player Sanjeev Shankar. The movement honours the great masters Ravi Shankar and Bismillah Khan, who brought this rich tradition to the West, as well as John Coltrane, who was inspired to revolutionise the expression of jazz. The second part, ‘Transition’, was transformed in the encounter between Palle Mikkelborg’s and pianist Florian Weber’s sublime improvisations. The third part, ‘Passage’, is dedicated to my composition teacher Bob Brookmeyer, whose spirit hovered over the creative process as a loving source of inspiration.

Folk Song No. 1 is based on the traditional Danish harvest song ‘Marken er mejet’and was originally commissioned by my mentor Erik Moskeholm for the European Jazz Youth Orchestra.

I owe a great debt of gratitude to the musicians in the NDR Bigband for their outstanding artistic contributions and patience, as well as to the producer and sound engineer team Christian Cluxen and Manuel Glowczewski for their meticulous and dedicated work on Echoes.