Search - Jan Johansson :: Longing

Jan Johansson (1931-1968) - Swedish jazz pianist

Patrik Lemberg | Tammisaari Finland | 10/01/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This CD is a re-recording of legendary Swedish jazz pianist Jan Johansson's music that was written for Swedish radio in mid-60's. The musicians of "The Swedish Radio Jazz Group" (some of whom were present during the original recording sessions) do an excellent job here, bringing out the genius composer that was Jan Johansson. These are leading musicians of the Swedish jazz scene. The music is in no way traditional; in the 60's it was probably considered somewhat revolutionary and quite experimental, although it is very well arranged. The music should with no doubt be categorized as (big band) jazz, although there are influences from e.g. classical music as well. A large amount of big horn arrangements are featured on most of the record. Trumpets, bass trombones, flutes, clarinets, bass clarinets, baritone- tenor- alto- & soprano-saxes... Track 1 through 12 are recorded in 1993 (featuring Bobo Stenson on piano) and the title track, recorded in 1966, features Johansson himself on piano.



WHO WAS JAN JOHANSSON ?...

Johansson is probably most known as the composer of the theme music from Pippi Långstrump (Pippi Longstocking) - a Swedish TV series from 1968/1969, and for his album "Jazz på svenska" ("Jazz in Swedish"), recorded in 1962-1964 by the duo Jan Johansson (piano) and Georg Riedel (bass). The album consists of 12 jazzed-up (hundreds of years old) Swedish folksongs. A CD featuring these 12 songs in combination with a 1967 recording of 12 Russian folksongs called "Jazz på ryska" ("Jazz in Russian") has been released on "Heptagon Records". That record is unfortunately not available on Amazon at the moment, but hopefully it some day will be...

Even John Coltrane has recorded an old Swedish folksong that Jan Johansson sort of made famous again by "jazzing up", called "Ack Värmeland du sköna", known in English as "Dear Old Stockholm". Coltrane's recording is however available on Amazon on his album "Dear Old Stockholm" - check it out!

Stan Getz too (with whom Johansson played during late 50's) has also recorded this song, if I'm not mistaking...



Awrightie...anyway, I've listened to this recording a lot the past few years, and I deeply recommend it to fans of very well performed good music."