Triskel Arts Centre and Cork Midsummer Festival Present
Different Rivers – 25th anniversary
Trygve Seim Ensemble

In this exclusive Irish concert at Triskel for the Cork Midsummer Festival,  Trygve Seim Ensemble will mark the 25th anniversary of the ECM release Different Rivers.

The ensemble will present highlights from their two ECM-releases, Different Rivers and the sequel Sangam, in addition to new music Seim has composed for this ensemble over the past years. For this exclusive Irish presentation Cork Midsummer Festival are partnering with Triskel Arts Centre who have a longstanding association with the acclaimed record label, and are a principal venue in Ireland for ECM Concerts.

Trygve Seim has since 1999 been so fortunate to work closely together with the legendary Producer Manfred Eicher and his prestigious record label ECM Records. With a total of 24 releases produced by Eicher, Seim is in fact the Norwegian musician in his generation (and younger) appearing on most releases on ECM Records. Only the legends Garbarek, Rypdal, Andersen and Christensen have more.

Trygve Seim Ensemble has a unique instrument line-up, and the members consists of highly skilled ensemble musicians who are also outstanding soloists in their own personal way:

Trygve Seim – saxophones/compositions
Torben Snekkestad – saxophones
Embrik Snerte – bassoon and contra forte
Håvard Lund – clarinet and bass clarinet
Eivind Lønning – trumpet and cornet
Ingebjørg Bruket – trombone
Lars Andreas Haug – tuba
Svante Henryson – cello and double bass
Frode Haltli – accordion
Per Oddvar Johansen – drums
Sven Persson – sound engineer

Trygve Seim Ensemble was formed as early as 1993, that time named Trondhjems Kunstorkester. The ensemble was initiated and led by Trygve Seim, and it used Seim’s brief compositions as starting point for (sometimes wild) improvisations. The name was changed to Trygve Seim Ensemble in 2000. By that time, Seim had begun to write more through-composed music for the ensemble, with soloist improvisations as a smaller part of the whole.

Seim’s debut CD as a bandleader and composer Different Rivers received the prestigious German critics’ award Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik for best jazz CD worldwide in year 2000, and was also awarded Stereoplay’s CD des Monats, Fono Forum’s Stern des Monats, and Jazzman’s Choc du mois.

Both Different Rivers and Sangam were praised by a unified international press, with glittering reviews even in The New York Times:

«Different Rivers is melancholy, lonely, hypnotizing music – harder to escape from than to listen to. Like a fireplace in an ice palace, you get hooked on it; it’s almost physical» (Mike Zwerin)

in The Guardian:

«Different Rivers is destined to become one of ECM’s classics» (John Fordham),

in Financial Times Deutschland:

«Trygve Seim, ein Klangarchitekt, der mit konventionellem Baumaterial, mit zwölf Musikern und natürlichen Klängen, erstaunliche Gebilde voll überraschender Räume schafft» (Stefan Hentz),

in Fono Forum:

«Sangam ist wie ihr Vorgänger Different Rivers eine CD der raren Top-Klasse» (Tilman Urbach),

and in many other newspapers and magazines worldwide.

«Meditative and ashen, every track of Different Rivers feels as if it was recovered from the archives of a lost culture, of which only this music remains to represent it. Let the rebuilding begin!»

This is scholar and music journalist Tyran Grillo conclusion in his book from 2013 Between Sound and Space – An ECM Records Primer. Grillo also claims that ‘African Sunrise’ and ‘Breathe’ (red.: both tracks from Different Rivers) are two of the finest tracks in the whole ECM catalogue.

When ECM Records celebrated their 50 years anniversary in 2019, Manfred Eicher chose «Different Rivers» to be one of the 50 ECM Touchstone CDs to mark the jubilee (one album from each of ECM’s 50 years). Eicher also decided that Trygve Seim Ensemble was to perform at the anniversary concert ECM organised in the Sendesaal Bremen under JazzAhead that year. London Jazz News wrote the following about this concert:

«One concert from the Norwegian programming strand stood out from everything else at jazzahead! this year as my unquestioned musical high-point. It was the ten-piece Trygve Seim Large Ensemble who were given the opportunity to present an event in ECM Records ongoing 50-years celebration in the wonderful acoustic of the Sendesaal Bremen. Seim’s compositions are remarkable for their logic, clarity and development. And for a large ensemble to play with this degree of understanding of an idiom, with such a natural organic flow of music, balance, a combination of making individual statements but also contributing to the greater picture… this was a concert to remember.»

Listen to Different Rivers on all major streaming platforms: https://ECM.lnk.to/differentrivers

Listen Sangam on all major streaming platforms: https://ECM.lnk.to/Sangam

Listen and see Trygve Seim Ensemble på Youtube: https://youtu.be/PgIkSGjrb0M?si=JV5CH7Xw1gz7StJT

Read more:

Read more about Trygve Seim on the ECM Records web page: https://ecmrecords.com/artists/trygve-seim/

and on Trygve Seim’s web page: http://www.trygveseim.com