»Iceland Visions – Music from the Geysers«

»If you want to survive on an island like Iceland,« says Geir Lysne, »you really have to pull yourself together«. He grew up in Norway, but knows the island in the Arctic Circle well from his visits there. »There’s a lot of energy up there. Iceland only has a population of 320,000, but its handball team is among the best in the world, while the Icelandic footballers just made it to the quarter-final of the European Championship! The island is home to many musicians, film-makers, artists and Nobel prizewinners.«

And Geir Lysne also knows the reason for this unusual concentration: »If you live so far away from everything, you have plenty of time to work on a project,« he says. Recalling his own youth in Norway, he goes on: »When American jazz musicians came to Europe in the 1950s, they tended to get stuck in Denmark and Sweden. Even today, people in Oslo still talk about the one concert that Thelonious Monk gave there. But he never got as far north as Iceland!« Nonetheless – or maybe precisely because of the absence of outside influences – a lively music scene developed in Iceland.

Lysne says that he always brings stacks of CDs back with him from his visits to Iceland. »Among them is an album by Ragga Gröndal: a marvellous voice, singing minimalistic music that’s rooted in the Icelandic folk tradition.« In the Elbphilharmonie concert the percussionist Helge Norbakken ‒ well-known from the bands of Jon Balke and Mari Boine ‒ joins forces with Marcio Doctor, his instrumental colleague in the NDR Big Band, to provide the foundation of the music, which bubbles beneath the surface like a geyser. »The two of them play different tonal spectra,« Lysne explains, »yet they are a perfect match.«