The Paper Trio was created when Danish, Copenhagen-based reed player Thomas Agergaard asked fellow Danish vocal artist Randi Pontoppidan (who collaborated before with Agergaard on the album of Lift (40) – her duo with Norwegain vocalist Sissel Vera Pettersen, Convocation, Time Span, 2011) and American, Los Angeles-based double bass player Greg Cohen (who recorded with Pontoppidan the duo album Event Horizon, Chant, 2018) to play a concert at The Paper Academy/Musem in Gilleleje in the countryside of Denmark in the summer of 2021. The only problem was that to raise funding from the Ministry of Culture for the concert this trio had to use actual paper to make sounds.

So this trio of resourceful improvisers found some interesting types of paper in the studio and briefly practiced incorporating these sounds into its malleable sculptural sonic universe. Apparently, the audience at the paper museum loved these experimental paper sounds and thus the Paper Trio was born. The Paper Trio felt inspired and took the new music to Kæv Studio in Copenhagen, where Hippo Road was recorded. Agergaard released the debut album on his label, Time Span, and did the cover artwork. The Paper Trio played again in the Copenhagen Jazz Festival of 2023 and now exploring the music of Danish composer Carl Nielsen.

Hippo Road documents the free-associative, natural flow of ideas of these gifted, inventive improvisers, playing their acoustic instruments – alto flute and soprano and tenor saxes, vocals and double bass, with the subtle, experimental-mechanical sounds of paper stamping machines and other paper fabrication machines used (check «Guttenberg Blues»). The trio balances cleverly between Pontoppidan’s wordless, free-associative and dreamy vocal musings, Agergaard’s concise melodic veins and Cohen’s economic rhythmic drive. The atmosphere is relaxed and conversational and highlights the deep rapport of these resourceful improvisers, moving seamlessly between ideas drawn from jazz, folk and classical music. Each of the 14 short pieces has a title that hints about its mood or the kind of paper used.

Eyal Hareuveni

Randi Pontoppidan (voice, paper, live electronic processing), Thomas Agergaard (alto flute, soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone, paper), Greg Cohen (double bass, paper)