Alex Ventling is a Swiss, New Zealand-born, Trondheim-based jazz pianist-composer-teacher-film-maker-visuals-creator and Vipassana meditation practitioner whose Master thesis, Response Over Reaction – the connection and adaptation of Vipassana meditation to improvised music, continues to influence his musical practice and teaching.
The View is the debut album of his duo with British, London-based drummer-composer, Phelan Burgoyne (who also plays in Ventling Trio with Swiss bassist Jérémie Krüttli), after eight years of playing together. The album was recorded at Nyhanva Studios at Folkets Hus Trondheim in the summer of 2023, with Ventling playing his own Steinway & Sons Model S piano from 1940.
Both Ventling and Burgoyne contributed compositions for this album, described by the duo as a «journey through lyrical improvisations, choral-like piano movements, synth-empowered grooves, and prepared-piano textures». The duo offers a beautiful cover of Czech composer Leoš Janáček’s «In The Mists». New Zealand trumpet legend Kim Paterson joins the duo in one piece.
Ventling and Burgoyne’s intimate and unhurried interplay relies on the rich and thoughtful percussive interweaving of piano and drums, enriched by vintage, ethereal synth sounds, and, obviously, years of musical friendship and accumulated experience. But the lyrical and introspective, economically melodic, modest, and spacious atmosphere of The View also suggests that this duo becomes fully immersed in the aesthetics of Nordic jazz. «First Train To Finse» with Paterson’s Arve Henriksen-tinged trumpet emphasizes the duo’s sonic evolution into meditative territories.
Eyal Hareuveni
Alex Ventling (piano, synthesizer), Phelan Burgoyne (drums, synthesizer), Kim Paterson (trumpet)
