About

“Norwegian trumpeter Mathias Eick, who was born in the village of Hem in 1979, took up the piano at five and the trumpet a year later. He recalls that in the family music room “we had a vibraphone, a piano, guitars, trumpets, and a French horn. We were five kids and all of us were playing at least one instrument. My father was really into jazz and was also playing all kinds of instruments, and my mother sang in choirs.” Eick subsequently studied trumpet and double bass at the Trondheim Music Academy…

…With his next album, Skala, the line-up was expanded, incorporating two drummers, reflecting an overall conception that was “wider and bigger in all directions”, according to Eick. What didn’t change was the emphasis on the lyrical soloist at the centre of things. Inspirations came from a wide variety of music, from classical to pop. Most recently, on Midwest, Eick reflected on distances travelled in an intensely melodic set of original folk-inflected compositions, which makes an imaginative journey from the tiny village where he grew up to the vast plains of Dakota in the American Midwest, an intercontinental journey made by hundreds of thousands of Eick’s compatriots over a century ago. John Kelman called the result “[Eick’s] most well-conceived and mature outing yet”. In 2007 Mathias Eick received the International Association of Jazz Educators’ International Jazz Award for New Talent.” – ECM Records

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