Thomas Tidholm – Jonas Knutsson: ORSA BY NIGHT (CE35)

Posted 2015-08-03

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Five years after meeting, author/musician Thomas Tidholm and composer/saxophonist Jonas Knutsson has made traditional music from the old village of Orsa in Sweden grow to embrace the world.

”We met at a course teaching the playing of folk tunes on wind instruments. Jonas taught, Thomas was an enthusiastic participant. Our contact developed, and in 2007 we made a CD with poetry and horns called Himlen Har Inga Hål (Heaven Has No Holes). From there our common musical journey continued, now in a little room on Brännkyrkagatan in Stockholm.

The music from Orsa was still there somewhere in the centre – tunes with singular twists, full of tales. We wanted to hear these more clearly, and therefore we started playing them more slowly. Sometimes we had to stop in the middle and look around in order to understand properly. Drones and shifts arose, we played the tunes ever more freely. Lots of associations came and we made room for them, anything could happen.

We never left Orsa, but the world became a little bigger every time. We started recording. We met on and off for five years. This turned into a CD – Orsa by Night. But it’s not over.” – Thomas Tidholm (abridged)