Critically acclaimed and innovative virtuoso Anders Hagberg is a unique soloist on a variety of flutes and soprano saxophone. His musical synthesis combines the improvised freedom of jazz with an archaic Scandinavian lyricism and influences from his longtime collaborations with African, Indian, and Oriental musicians. On the release of his album ‘North’, Anders spoke to Occhi about his career and love of music.
Congratulations on your career to date. For the benefit of our readers, how were you introduced to music, and woodwind instruments?
My parents have told me I´ve been making sounds, rhythms, and melodies since I was very little, so it seems like music always has been an integral part of how I express myself. The reason I started with the flute was actually a coincidence. I wanted to take drums lessons but the class was full. My second choice was electric guitar but you couldn´t get that teaching back then, so I picked the third choice; the flute. I guess this is the reason why I´ve been playing the way I have, with a percussive approach and trying to find alternative sounds on with the instrument. I have always been improvising and found jazz and rhythmic music so attractive. My flute teacher didn´t want me to take up the saxophone to ruin my embouchure and I did what he said until the day I saw Sonny Rollins live at Pori Jazz in Finland. I took the boat back to Stockholm and borrowed money from my grandmother and bought myself a Selmer tenor sax.
Who have been your major career influences, and why?
I have always been attracted to the improvised freedom of jazz, mixed with elements from Nordic folk music and non-western musical traditions, especially from the Middle East, India, Japan, and West Africa. Thus, some early important influences for me were artists that represent this open, boundary-crossing approach like Weather Report, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Chick Corea, Miles Davis, and Jan Garbarek.
With age, I can more clearly see how my musical path has evolved and what creative sparks have given me new perspectives. I remember when I was 17, I was hearing Shakti with John McLaughlin, Zakir Hussain, and Vikku Vinayakram et.al. in Montreux, and I was totally blown away by this music. A decade later, I was included in the group Mynta, together with tabla player Fazal Qureshi (the younger brother of Zakir) and our first meeting was like playing with someone I´ve known forever. All my listening to Shakti and Indian classical music was like intuitively coming out of my flute when playing with him. We are still, more than 30 years later playing together in different projects.
I also like to mention Jan Garbarek and other Scandinavian musicians as important examples of a way to create a Nordic dialect of Jazz. Being an artist, and perhaps even more, an improvising musician raises questions of identity. I listened a lot to these artists during my teens but, at the university where I studied music, I focused on learning the tradition of Jazz with role models like Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Dexter Gordon to name a few. However, after working professionally as a freelancer for a couple of years, I started to question with what credibility I, as a Swedish middle-class guy, could play my tenor with that deep influence from African American soloists. Journalists and other musicians also referred to Rollins and Dexter etc. when describing my playing and I realized I needed to find a way towards a more personal sound.
At that point, Garbarek showed an alternative way of relating to Jazz and improvisation, taking a starting point in Nordic Folk music, and also in his collaborations with oriental music. I changed my focus to flutes and soprano sax as a way of getting away from the tenor sax canon of the jazz tradition.
As an artist, I am naturally influenced by so many musicians (we don´t have enough space to list them all) and human experiences in life.
I must mention the importance for me of Wayne Shorter, both as a saxophonist and composer but also his philosophical wisdom on art and life, and the inspiration from his Buddhist practice. The Indian flautist Hariprasad Chaurasia has been an influence in how I can try to implement glissandi and microtonality from the bansuri flute to the silver flute. A quite recent discovery for me is the music of Jon Hassell, which has influenced generations of Norwegian trumpet players with his “Fourth World” music.
You have toured worldwide, with your own bands, plus supported notable musicians such as Marilyn Mazur, John Tchicai, Anders Jormin, Vikku Vinayakram, Shankar Mahadevan to name a few. Please share with us your most memorable experiences, and what you’ve learned during these times.
I first met John Tchicai when playing with the Nordic band Yggdrasil and we later played together in Pierre Dørges New Jungle Orchestra, together with Marilyn Mazur, Hamid Drake, and other great artists. At that time, I must admit I wasn´t quite aware of John´s vast experience from the NYC avant-garde scene in the 1960s, where he performed and recorded with John Coltrane, Don Cherry, and other icons of free jazz. He played in a totally different way than I did and at first, I couldn´t figure out what he was doing. What struck me most was his sound and its projection. It was carried out in the hall in an effortless way, while I felt I have to struggle to match him. So, during one of our travels, I asked him how he worked on developing his sound and his answer was something like, “your sound is a reflection on how you think about yourself”.
I expected something about mouthpieces and reeds and he gives me this philosophical view, which I never forget.
Another turning point for me was my first tour in India with Fazal Qureshi in Mynta. We were playing concert halls in front of thousands of people and in Bombay we were joined on the stage by Vikku Vinayakram from Shakti and had the celebrities of classical Indian music on the front row, like the legendary Alla Rakha and others. After the show, they expressed appreciation of my attempts to understand the ragas and the rhythm of Indian music but what really seemed to affect them more profoundly was when I was playing some Swedish-sounding folk melodies and a traditional Nordic overtone flute. Vikku and I had an intense musical dialogue on the stage with the trad flute and the ghatam and after the show, he hugged me and complimented my playing. After this tour, I realized fully the importance of being grounded in your own identity and musical and cultural heritage.
In addition to playing with artists from other cultures and genres, I always return to the Scandinavian jazz musicians and I´ve been fortunate to play with Marilyn Mazur (Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter) and Anders Jormin (Charles Lloyd). It seems like we have something in common in how we approach music and play together, something about listening, giving space to each other and pauses, and for the melodic qualities which I think comes from our very rich folk music tradition. Anders Jormin is since many years my colleague at the Improvisation program at the Academy of Music and Drama, Univ. of Gothenburg.
You’ve composed music for films, dance performances as well as many albums. Do you apply a particular methodology or approach to working in these respective fields?
I am very inspired by visual arts such as photography, painting, etc., and also contemporary dance. I think it has to do with the way I approach these art forms. Since I´m not an expert in these fields, I encounter the expressions in a very intuitive way. Getting my artistic impulses in this way gives me other impulses to music than if my influence is directly musical. Saying this, I wouldn´t say I have a formulated methodology, but rather an intuitive way of being open to associations and metaphors that become starting points for my creation. Movement and colors are two distinct aspects of dance and painting which easily can be translated and reacted to, musically.
Talking about this I´d like to mention my connection to the Nordic Water Color Museum where I have been privileged to have had commissions and residencies, creating music in dialogue with exhibitions by Louise Bourgeois and video artist Bill Viola.
Please tell us more about your latest project titled ‘North’ and what listeners can expect?
My new album North is performed by old and new friends from three Nordic countries: Helge Andreas Norbakken from Norway plays percussion, Finnish Joona Toivanen, piano and Johannes Lundberg, Sweden on double bass and recording engineer/producer and myself on flutes and soprano sax. The musicians in the group are associated with artists like Mari Boine, Jon Hassell, Jon Balke, Billy Cobham, Avishai Cohen to name a few.
The music for North was recorded over two days in late February 2020, just before the world was paralyzed by the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. We met in Lundberg´s “Studio Epidemin” in Gothenburg which has hosted many international artists from ECM productions. Taking a handful of compositions as a starting point, the recording session captured us in a flow of inspired, intuitive collaborative music-making, present in the moment and open to meeting one another in improvised musical interludes.
North consists of nine pieces of music. Some are relatively more through-composed while others are more improvisatory, taking their point of departure in different modal sound worlds. These ambient sounds, too, are created on my wind instruments and hark back to the way of working featured on my album, “Trust” (Naxos, 2018). The compositions on North are dedicated to various people, places, and phenomena. The title of the album is a reference both to the musicians’ countries of origin and to the musical approach taken, in which communication, silence, and melody are central.
Please tell us more about the recording process
Johannes Lundberg and I have been playing a lot together for almost 15 years now, which has developed into a very intuitive and communicative way of making music, both while playing and also in the studio, editing and mixing. Joona Toivanen used to be my student and I included him in 2010 on my quartet album “Stories of Now”, with which we toured with for a couple of years where a US East Coast tour is worth noting with the festival and club dates in DC, NYC and Rochester (NY). Since then, Johannes and I have played a lot with Middle Eastern musicians (like Ahmad al Khatib and Youssef Hbeisch from Trio Joubran) touring in South Korea, India, Baltic and Nordic countries. However, we found that some of my compositions needed the harmonic foundation from a chord instrument and we teamed up with Joona again. I got to know Helge Norbakken when he started to work as a teacher at the Academy where I am a professor and we really connected from the first moment. The preparations for the recording were, for practical reasons that we shared recordings back and forth and then we met for a brief run-through before the session started. The music that ended up on the album, however, arranged and partly through-composed was exclusively first or second takes and in 1,5 days we were ready, and Helge returned to Oslo to play at the funeral of legendary drummer Jon Christensen (Keith Jarrett, Jan Garbarek, Ralph Towner, etc.).
As mentioned, I get inspiration from photography and especially street photography, where I find New York-based Saul Leiter as one of the greatest. I approached his foundation with the humble request if it was possible to use one of Leiter´s pictures for the cover and they gladly approved this. The motif, with rainy snow and an umbrella, really catches the winter in Gothenburg by the Swedish West coast.
Jazz music and its appreciation appear to differ from one country to the next. Overall, how would you describe the Scandinavian jazz scene?
I would say it is a very vibrant and lively environment. All over Scandinavia, there are university programs in Jazz and improvised music and since I am working as a teacher at the Improvised music department of the Academy of Music and Drama, I can confirm the high level of the young musicians who are graduating. The institutions have different profiles and Gothenburg is known for encouraging the students in developing a personal sound, rather than mastering every style in the tradition. We are also collaborating closely with other sections of the institution i.e. World Music and Composition/Sound Art programs which contributes to artistic synergies among staff and students.
I’m particularly drawn to your enthusiasm for working across artistic disciplines. You’ve worked with the late Indian contemporary dancer Astad Deboo for example. Can you tell our readers more about your work with him and Embla Dance?
In 2015, I was touring in India with Fazal Qureshi, Sabir Khan, and others and at one of the performances, Astad was attending. He approached me afterward saying that he liked my music and suggested we could collaborate. I gave him my album “Melodic Melange” (2014) and after hearing it he said that “some of the pieces make me want to create dance”. About a year later he was invited to the festival Stockholm Arts and he wanted me and Ahmad al Khatib to perform with him on the main stage. It was an amazing experience, to practice without preparation enter the stage and make music and choreography together. After that, we kept in touch and he was posting photos and messages from his performances around the globe. His warm and generous spirit was always showing and I was really choked when I heard about his passing.
Embla Dance is a Sweden-based company with a focus on dance theatre. They do primarily performances for children and site-specific work. The artistic director is Anna Wennerbeck who is also my wife. We met while performing in the Botanic Garden and have collaborated off and on since then.
The last eighteen months have proven difficult for most. How far has the pandemic impacted current projects, including your teaching commitments at the University of Gothenburg?
It has obviously been a huge change for the entire world I would say. From one day to the other we weren´t allowed to go to campus and teach, and start to use Zoom instead. Concerts and tours were canceled. However, having 50 % employment as a professor makes my situation financially, privileged compared to my friends who base all their activity on performing. As an improviser in music, I guess that I and my likes are kind of used to adapt to new premises in life and to be creative and find new ways of making music and teaching. Since fall 2020 we have at least been allowed to have individual classes and small group ensembles at the campus which have been great! I was supposed to make a solo tour in the US in August 2020, which was canceled. The plan was to meet up with violinist and writer Stephen Nachmanovitch (author of Free Play) which couldn´t happen. Instead, I invited Stephen to have an online seminar on improvisation with our master students which worked out great. Of course, it´s not the same thing as meeting in person, but at least we could share his thoughts, save the climate and it´s less time-consuming.
During the past year, I did other online collaborations and overdubs on several albums as well as commissions for a dance performance, an art project, and a research project on spaces and acoustics.
What other projects can we look forward to seeing you involved in?
The Swedish government announced that the covid situation is developing in a positive direction and restrictions will gradually become less, so hopefully, things will start to open up. It will take time before getting back to “normal” but at least I have some nice performances and recordings to look forward to. This summer, I will do a couple of site-specific performances with Embla Dance on an island in the archipelago of Western Sweden as well as church concerts with organ player Johannes Landgren. The release tour of North will take place in March 2022 and hopefully earlier, postponed international performances will be possible to do as well.
While waiting for this, I can recommend one of our streamed concerts from Haga Church, Gothenburg in March 2021, where I hosted three acts chosen to the beautiful acoustics and visual environment of the space. The music is recorded by one of my close friends and partners, sound designer Åke Linton, known for his longtime work with EST, Esbjörn Svensson Trio, and a bunch of other artists. North can be heard live at https://vimeo.com/518139517
Where will our readers find out more about you?
My web page is always updated so one can find info and links posted on https://andershagberg.se/
My albums are available on all digital platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, etc.
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4EHq5kOSsWr0OxdUYA2KoJ?si=MQmgl_b3T3OVPUxxhFkROw
I´m afraid, I am not that active on social media, although occasionally checking my Facebook page. But please feel free to reach out to me through Messenger or mail address on the web page.
©Anders-Hagberg_photographs by Per-Buhre & Peter Lloyd
For further info on Anders and his new album check out our recent podcast/video interview.
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