| Jazz |
Bugge Wesseltoft’s Snowbound Intimacy and the Nordic Sound
There are albums that arrive like gusts of wind, reshaping landscapes, and there are albums that fall like snow, quietly, imperceptibly, until you realize the ground has been entirely transformed. Bugge Wesseltoft’s It’s Snowing on My Piano was one such album. Released in 1997 on ACT Records, it slipped almost modestly into the holiday season, offering not bombast but restraint, not cheer but reflection. To everyone’s surprise, including the pianist’s own, it became one of the label’s defining successes, an unlikely seasonal classic across Europe.
Wesseltoft’s latest album returns to that project nearly three decades later, not as an echo but as an extension. It is an album steeped in delicacy, hovering between genres: part classical meditation, part folk lullaby, part jazz exploration, and ultimately beyond classification. It is music for deep listening, an invitation to stillness in a culture that often resists it.
A voice within the Nordic sound
To understand the resonance of Wesseltoft’s work, it helps to situate it within a broader movement that has shaped European jazz since the late 20th century. The so-called “Nordic sound”, a term popularized by ACT and ECM alike, has come to signify a particular aesthetic: cool yet not cold, contemplative yet charged with emotion, open to silence as much as to sound. Where American jazz has often thrived on rhythm, swing, and the blues, the Scandinavian contribution leans toward atmosphere, folk tradition, and classical lineage.
Wesseltoft has always been a curious figure within this tradition. A child of Norway’s folk melodies and European classical training, he was also steeped in jazz’s improvisatory spirit. His early work in the 1990s placed him alongside ECM stalwarts, yet he soon carved a path of his own, especially with his “New Conception of Jazz” project, which blended electronics with acoustic piano in ways that startled traditionalists. It’s Snowing on My Piano seemed, at the time, like a retreat into simplicity, a stripping away of the experiments in favor of bare emotion. Instead, it became a cornerstone of the Nordic repertoire.
The doubt that birthed a tradition
When Siggi Loch, the founder of ACT, first suggested that Wesseltoft record a Christmas album, the pianist recoiled. Christmas, to him, was not a season of easy joy. Having worked in a psychiatric clinic in the early 1990s, he associated December with heightened loneliness, depression, and familial strain. The holiday’s forced cheer stood in stark contrast to the quiet warmth of his own childhood celebrations, which he remembered as evenings of calm, music, and togetherness.
From that tension grew the seed of the project. Wesseltoft imagined an album that his daughter Maren, then just two and a half years old, could grow up with: gentle, tender, filled with the carols sung around the tree. Recorded with an almost ascetic restraint, the music bore none of the garishness of seasonal albums. Instead, it offered intimacy. The gamble paid off. Listeners across Germany, Sweden, and eventually much of Europe embraced the album as a refuge from the noise of December.
The concert that proved him wrong
Still, Wesseltoft doubted whether such fragile music could hold an audience in a live setting. He recalls his first performance of Snowing in a small cultural center near Oslo, with barely a hundred people in attendance. “I started playing slowly, softly, just as on the album,” he remembers. “After a few pieces I heard deep breaths in the room. I thought, Oh my God, they must be bored out of their minds. They’ll all leave at the break.” Instead, no one moved. The silence became part of the performance. Afterward, the audience told him how profound the experience had been. From that moment forward, he has performed this repertoire every December in Norway, transforming it into a ritual both personal and communal.
The touch of a craftsman
Listening to the new volume, one feels Wesseltoft’s own absorption in the act of listening, as if he is as much audience as performer. His touch is so careful, so reverent, that it recalls a craftsman turning the pages of a first edition. Is there improvisation in this music, or is every phrase meticulously scripted? Only Wesseltoft knows. What matters is the suspension of time it creates, the sense that each note hovers in the air longer than physics should allow.
ACT Records and the art of curation
None of this would have been possible without ACT, a label that has consistently championed artists who blur the boundaries of jazz, folk, and classical traditions. Founded by Siggi Loch, ACT has built a catalog that defines the European jazz aesthetic for many listeners worldwide. From Esbjörn Svensson Trio to Nils Landgren to Wesseltoft, the label has made a virtue of spaciousness, melody, and cross-genre openness. Where American jazz labels often focus on virtuosity and lineage, ACT has specialized in atmosphere and accessibility, cultivating a sound that is both serious and welcoming.
Wesseltoft’s project, then, is not just a personal triumph but also part of a collective story: how European jazz reinvented itself by embracing silence, folk heritage, and intimacy. In many ways, It’s Snowing on My Piano crystallized that ethos, and its new chapter reaffirms it.
A gift for those who linger
For those who love beauty, whether they come from classical concert halls, jazz clubs, or simply from quiet living rooms—the new album will sound like a small but radiant gift. It does not dazzle with speed, nor overwhelm with sound. Instead, it waits. It asks the listener to pause, to breathe, to let the snow fall.
And perhaps that is why Wesseltoft’s music has endured: because in a season saturated with noise, he offers silence; in a world hungry for spectacle, he offers sincerity.
Thierry De Clemensat
Member at Jazz Journalists Association
USA correspondent for Paris-Move and ABS magazine
Editor in chief – Bayou Blue Radio, Bayou Blue News
PARIS-MOVE, September 24th 2025
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Musician : Bugge Wesseltoft
Track Listing :
It’s Snowing on My Piano – N
In Dulci Jubilo
Mitt Hjerte Alltid Vanker – N
Det Kimer Nu Til Julefest – Horten (Live)
Es Ist Ein Ros Entsprungen – Horten (Live)
What Child Is This – Mandal (Live)
Kimer I Klokker – Stavanger (Live)
Deilig Er Jorden – N
Stille Nacht / Into Eternal Silence – Stavanger (Live)
Various recordings from Christmas concerts in December 2024 at Nøtterøy Kulturhus, Stavanger Konserthus, Horten Kirke, Ålesund Kulturhus and Mandal Kulturhus
Music arranged and produced by Bugge Wesseltoft
Mixed and mastered by Klaus Scheuermann
Photo by Jarle H. Moe
Cover art by Ardy Strüwer
Design by Siggi Loch