Guri Dahl
Jan Garbarek
Norwegian Saxophonist By Jim AllenTrue jazz fusion at its most expansive.
The party line on Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek is that he began as an edgy avant-gardist and eventually sold out by making New Age-tinged ambient jazz in line with critics' worst preconceptions about the ECM label. This oversimplified view overlooks the fact that most of Garbarek's early, outward-bound recordings were in fact made for ECM, and that every era of his work finds the saxman dropping some adventurous explorations in among the mellow mood music, from 1984's It's OK To Listen to The Gray Voice to 1994's collaboration with The Hilliard Ensemble on Officium and beyond. In fact, Garbarek has indeed been one of ECM's defining artists, but it's as much on account of his pursuit of a true fusion aesthetic - fusing jazz with everything from European folk to classical music, not just with rock - as for the dewy, pastel tones that began dominating his music by the second half of the '80s.
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| Jan Garbarek: Critical Connections | |
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