Lokalt Piano is Norwegian pianist and composer (and sound engineer and producer) Morten Qvenild’s second solo album, following Personal Piano (Hubro, 2015). The album was created, inspired by, and recorded in Qvenild’s green recording studio – UGLA LYD – in his garden, and the local environment in the artist town of Nesodden, near Oslo, and as the album’s title suggests, it is focused entirely on Qvenild’s own local neighbourhood, family, and nearby nature.
Qvenild is known for his work with In the Country, Solveig Slettahjell, Susanne Sundfør, Arve Henriksen, Ingrid Olava, Nils Petter Molvær, Benedicte Maurset, and Susanna and the Magical Orchestra (he was the magical orchestra), to name a few. Lokalt Piano offers an intimate yet futuristic sound, thoughtfully layered with subtle electronics and programming that expand the piano’s natural resonance, and suggest an imaginative, disruptive flow to its familiar sound.
Qvenild stages the cycle of eight songs like mini-dramas, using his unassuming, direct but heavily processed vocal (in English and Norwegian) delivery to add a reflective and vulnerable melancholic dimension. His songs question place attachment, its claustrophobic environment, the local roots of art, and issues related to ambivalence in art production in relation to nature loss. Qvenild offers a contemplative, reserved cover of A-Ha’s synth-pop song, «Out of Blue Comes Green» (penned by Paul Waaktaar-Savoy). Qvenild has worked with A-Ha in its later years. Slettahjell offers a most beautiful, moving interpretation of Don Henley’s «Boys of Summer», a song about aging and questioning the past, and missed loves. This cycle ends with «After the Rain», using the rain as a metaphor for Qvenild’s sober perspective of life.
Lokalt Piano is also an outcome of Qvenild’s collaborations with local artists – the art collective Lang Omvei, who were responsible for the album’s concept, visual artist Jon Benjamin Tallerås, who took photos from the oak forest at Røer and the nature reserve at Sørby, and author Lars Mørch Finborud, who has written a poem dedicated to Nesodden. The album will be launched with a series of taster sessions with local «pop-up» concerts at Nesodden local places that have created and shaped the music, lyrics, and artwork of the album – churches, local museums, mines, forest groves, and studios.
Eyal Hareuveni
Morten Qvenild (piano, vocals, programming, electronics), Solveig Slettahjell (vocals)
