| Jazz |
In the Heart of European Jazz, Anders Hagberg Crafts a Timeless Soundscape of Lucid Poetics and Hope.
At the confluence of European jazz, where the currents of classical music merge with the global streams of world traditions, Anders Hagberg has delivered an album of remarkable delicacy and depth. His latest work resists categorization, offering instead a sonic journey born not of artistic ego, but of a quietly urgent desire to make us listen, reflect, and ultimately, to travel,emotionally, spiritually, geographically.
“For me, this music is a response to the challenges we face,” Hagberg explains with contemplative clarity. “It is filled with sadness, but also hope. A hope I find in collective listening and creation, in the playfulness of children, in small acts of resistance and resilience. Music allows us to perceive the beauty that still endures in these uncertain times.”
To call this music “sad,” however, is perhaps to misread its essence. There is something more piercing, more lucid, almost stoically poetic, in its emotional charge. It is not mournful but clear-eyed. And that lucidity, uncompromising yet tender, feels all the more authentic coming from an artist whose collaborations span the globe and include revered names such as Shakti, Avishai Cohen, Marilyn Mazur, and the late Jon Hassell. Hagberg’s compositional voice, fluid, expansive, and deeply rooted, emerges with such natural authority that it neither demands attention nor retreats into subtlety. It simply is, grounded in a narrative and melodic instinct that carries the listener like a river current.
Rooted in improvisations laid down during two focused recording sessions in 2023 and 2024, Hagberg’s compositions blend original pieces with reimagined folk melodies. Three of the album’s most affecting tracks, “Ruins,” “Evening Hymn,” and “With Hope”, are drawn from chorales of Gammelsvenskby, a village in Ukraine founded by Swedish settlers centuries ago. “Arctic Call,” meanwhile, is shaped by the haunting contours of an Inuit drum chant, while “Woods in Blue” traces its lineage to a traditional polska from Härjedalen in Sweden. The album closes with a gently reconfigured version of Francis Poulenc’s choral masterpiece O Magnum Mysterium, arranged with exquisite sensitivity for the ensemble’s distinct vocal palette.
This is music that demands, and rewards, deep listening. Its sequencing is deliberate, guiding the listener through a gradually unfolding emotional terrain that feels as immersive as it is intentional. Hagberg doesn’t merely craft songs; he sculpts inner landscapes from sound. His voice as a composer and instrumentalist reflects a rare synthesis of influences and emotional intelligence. This is not ambient music meant to fade into the background. It is active, articulate, quietly insistent. It speaks. It reveals. It never panders, and yet it seduces, precisely because it seeks nothing other than to express something true.
A master of both flute and saxophone, Hagberg draws emotion from each instrument with such organic fluidity that one voice seems to dissolve into the other. It is in this seamless transition, this interplay of breath and tone, that one finds the distinctive soul of his sound. His approach privileges nuance over grandeur, subtleties over spectacle, an aesthetic that invites not just hearing, but listening in the deepest sense.
With a background that includes film scores, dance productions, and a prolific discography recognized with Grammy nominations and awards, Hagberg has also served as artistic director and performer at major cultural events across Scandinavia, from the Urkult/Fire Night Festival to the Stockholm Millennium celebrations and the Nordic Watercolor Museum, where he collaborated in settings that included works by Bill Viola and Louise Bourgeois.
For Anders Hagberg, music is as much an intellectual inquiry as it is a musical one. That duality imbues his compositions with a dramaturgical tension, a narrative arc that enhances the pleasure of listening. The acoustic format, rich in texture yet stripped of excess, lends the album a sense of timeless grace. It does not chase trends or adhere rigidly to genre conventions. Instead, it inhabits a space of its own, quietly transcending forms and expectations.
It is precisely this refusal to be categorized that may ensure the album’s endurance. This is music for now, yes, but also for the future. Its scope is significant. Its craftsmanship assured. And if 2025 proves to be a year of renewal for composers like Hagberg, who could possibly complain?
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, July 20th 2025
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To buy this album (October 3, 2025)
Musicians :
Anders Hagberg | Flutes (Concert/ Alto/ Bass/ Contrabass), Soprano Saxophone, Matusi, Singing Bowl
Johannes Lundberg | Double Bass, Vocals, Oberheim, FX
Joona Toivanen | Piano, Prepared Piano, Synthesizer, Key Bird, FX
Helge Andreas Norbakken | Percussion, Drums
Tracklist :
Elasticity of Trees
Elegy
Ruins
Welcome – For Allie
Circle No. 2
With Hope
Arctic Call
Evening Hymn – Gammelsvenskby
Sisters – For Lo & Ebba
Woods in Blue
O magnum mysterium