Froy Aagre: Cycle of Silence (2010)

This is the ACT label's debut for Norwegian saxophonist Froy Aagre, an Oslo-based artist who studied classical, jazz and gamelan music in Birmingham, tango in Buenos Aires, and saxophone with Dave Liebman in New York. She plays pensive soprano sax throughout on this album of her own pieces, with a piano trio and occasional help from french horn, trombone, and cello. Delicately floating dances over soft, two-note repeats swell into mournful brass-cushioned songs; distant brass chords underpin Jan Garbarek-like wisps and curls of soprano melody; and Aagre's purity of tone and sensuous elisions make her most cryptic figures persuasive. She writes hauntingly harmonised ensemble passages for bassist Audun Ellingsen and pianist Andreas Ulvo, and though much of the music is reflective, there are shyly frivolous themes as well, giving way to looping piano and bass patterns for the soprano to drift over. It's meticulously crafted, in some ways typically Nordic chamber-jazz with a liberal dose of classical music's precision of phrasing, but for all its apparent frailty, Aagre's composing leaves an impression that ripples on long after the disc has stopped spinning.

Tracklist

01. Steam Train 03:59

02. Long Distance 05:59
03. Words On An Envelope 06:43
04. Atoms 04:50
05. Lost Connection 03:33
06. Siberia 06:40
07. Slow Motion 04:03
08. View From Venus 05:00
09. Cycle Of Silence 08:14
10. Neverending Journey 03:08
Cycle of Silence
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