Arve Henriksen’s Ambient Jazz

Re-listening to Towards Language (2017)

Arve Henriksen’s album Towards Language (Rune Grammofon) came out just over five years ago. It’s an essential catalog item for the growing library of what has come to be called “ambient jazz” — what used to be, when there was far less of this stuff, simply thought of as “music in the tradition of Miles Davis’ In a Silent Way.” The lush-yet-minimalist record teamed the Norwegian trumpeter with his countrymen Jan Bang and Erik Honoré (who have worked with numerous electronically mediated trumpeters, including Jon Hassell and Nils Petter Molvær).

Here is Towards Language on YouTube. You should start at the beginning, but if you’re looking for a key track, I recommend “Hibernal.”

And once you’ve gotten it under your skin, check out this live performance, which turns the trio into a quartet with the addition of guitarist Eivind Aarset:

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