Present is the 25th album by Swedish vocalist, composer, songwriter, and producer (and an Associate Professor of Jazz Voice at the Grieg Academy, University of Bergen) Lina Nyberg. She leads a chamber, chordless quintet with her partner, master reed player Fredrik Ljungkvist, trumpeter Linnea Jonsson, and the rhythm section of double bass player Josef Kallerdahl (of Hoob Records) and drummer Peter Danemo, who have played in Nyberg’s bands for nearly twenty years. Nyberg adds live electronics to her vocals.
The seven songs offer a wise, compassionate, and sober perspective on the passage of time and the mood swings between joy and sorrow. The album begins with the love song, «Future», thinking aloud about how her loved ones will remember her, with Nyberg’s precise phrasing and live electronics setting its rhythmic drive and triggering Ljungkvist’s free, lyrical abstraction. The following title piece suggests a Zen-like approach to life and its basic ingredients- walking, reading, talking, washing dishes, drinking coffee, being present – but beyond the repeated washing of the dishes and being present in the moment, it is a playful, liberating statement from the subjection to the endless scroll on flickering screens, and the swinging melody intensifies this timeless call.
«Small smooth stones» offers a touching reflection of joyful, worryless time spent with a loved one on a beautiful beach, cementing Nyberg’s telepathic interplay with her band. «Lost and found» suggests a different perspective of intimacy and deep relationship as an ever-nourishing, life-affirming essence. The only song Nyberg did not compose is «Somewhere called home» by Pat Smythe and Frances Landesman, made famous by Norma Winstone, which highlights Nyberg’s qualities as a thoughtful interpreter, who owes much to the jazz legacy but is not bound by it, and can «sing softly, sing sadly», like the song’s lyrics, and as she wishes.
«Past» addresses the current time when, maybe, «your future behind you now», and Nyberg reminisces about dear memories with an engaging, compassionate look, stressing the song’s loose, free-associative, and free-improvised essence. The last song, «The Good Night», adds a melancholic, almost ceremonial dimension of the inevitable, the «walking to the dark, good night alone», but Nyberg offers a radical conception of this dramatic phase, capturing it as an ultimate, humbling spiritual ascension. Accordingly, this song ends with angelic vocal samples from the piece When We Sing, written by Nyberg and performed and commissioned by the choir Tusen Tungor (Thousand Tongues),
Present is a beautiful, insightful album that demands repeated, careful listening to fully capture its wisdom and musical wonders.
Eyal Hareuveni
Lina Nyberg (vocals, live electronics), Fredrik Ljungkvist (tenor saxophone, bass clarinet), Linnea Jonsson (trumpet), Josef Kallerdahl (double bass), Peter Danemo (drums)
