Danish, Copenhagen prolific pianist-keyboard player composer Anders Filipsen plays in Kresten Osgood Trio and The Firebirds and Mesmer trios and was a member of the bands Travelling Tribes and The White/Black Nothing. Aldebar Nights of Mangos suggests a new step in Filipsen’s genre-defying musical journey, leading a classic jazz piano trio – with double bass player Casper Nyvang Rask and drummer Rune Lohse. The three musicians crossed paths before and all took part in Rune Lohse -7-’s Kæmpeband (Gotta Get It Out, 2019). The album was recorded after five years of intense work.

Filipsen composed eleven short pieces for this trio that swings between free improvisations and carefully composed, contemporary music as well as between the fragile and subtle to the explosive and unpredictable. This kind of duality and unpredictability has become Filipsen’s signature and sound and inspired a  few of the pieces («Dark and plenty of sun» and «A pale man in a dark room»). Aldebar Nights of Mangos reflects Filipsen’s irreverent sonic vision and encompasses threads from jazz legendary and seminal pianists-composers such as Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk, avant-garde composers such as Morton Feldman and Conlon Nancarrow as well as serial music, Hermeto Pascoal and even the art-rock band Talking Heads.

The Filipsen Trio enjoys experimenting with Filipsen’s clever, genre-transcending, and uplifting sonic vision in perpetual transformation and organic, almost telepathic dynamics. Its music is characterized by its use of space and its way of balancing catchy melodies, playful rhythmic patterns, risk-taking, inexhaustible curiosity, and a sharp sense of humor (check «Monks Shuffli»), all condensed into concise pieces. In each of these short pieces, Filipsen’s Trio challenges the conventions of the classic jazz trio and searches for new sonic options, egalitarian interplay, and energetic drive.

Eyal Hareuveni

Anders Filipsen (piano), Casper Nyvang Rask (double bass), Rune Lohse (drums)