| Jazz |
Summary: A deep dive into Celebrating Live, where Mathias Landæus and the Wartel Quartet blend jazz, improvisation, and classical influences into a bold, collective work.
“Celebrating Live” Album Review – Mathias Landæus & Wartel Quartet Explore Modern Jazz and Improvisation
The package from Sweden didn’t look like much, until it did.
Inside the envelope was a CD, accompanied by a brief, mischievous note signed by Johnny Wartel. I skimmed the letter at first, not yet realizing that what it contained would open onto a deeply layered musical encounter. Of the musicians involved, the only name I recognized was Mathias Landæus, a pianist whose work I had followed with growing admiration over the years.
For those who assume that musicians working at the outer edges of complexity leave humor behind, Celebrating Live offers a quiet but firm rebuttal. There is wit here, subtle, understated, sometimes almost hidden beneath the surface, but it is very much alive. What the album proposes instead is something rarer: a meeting point between rigor and play, structure and spontaneity.
The quartet brings together three generations of musicians bound not only by shared aesthetics but by family ties and long-standing relationships. Brothers Henrik Wartel and Jonny Wartel are joined by bassist Georgia Wartel Collins and pianist Mathias Landæus. The result is a kind of musical intimacy that cannot be manufactured, a closeness forged over decades, shaped by shared listening, and sharpened by difference.
To understand the Wartel brothers is to return to their beginnings. Born in the late 1950s and raised by parents who were classical pianists, they grew up immersed in a musical environment where discipline and expression were inseparable. That dual inheritance still defines their approach. Their work resists easy categorization, unfolding instead at the intersection of jazz, free improvisation, and contemporary classical music. This is not fusion in the superficial sense; it is a deeper synthesis, one that reflects an ongoing inquiry into what music can be, and what it should be, in the 21st century.
In this context, the rhythm section does not behave as a conventional foundation. It breathes, shifts, responds. At times, it feels less like a base than like a conversation, fluid, alert, constantly evolving. Henrik and Jonny Wartel, both veterans of international careers across multiple configurations, bring a sense of long-form listening that anchors even the most abstract passages.
At the piano, Mathias Landæus remains one of the most compelling voices in Scandinavian jazz. His playing is exploratory without ever becoming aimless. Listeners familiar with albums such as Resilience or Dissolving Patterns will recognize his ability to move between lyricism and abstraction with unusual ease. Here, his touch ranges from sparse, almost hesitant figures to cascading lines that seem to search for their own resolution. There are moments when his phrasing evokes the spiritual intensity of Keith Jarrett, not in imitation, but in a shared sense of risk and inwardness.
One of the album’s most striking qualities lies in its handling of space. In several passages, the music thins to near silence: a few isolated piano notes, a bowed bass line hovering at the edge of audibility, a cymbal shimmer that dissolves almost as soon as it appears. Then, gradually, the quartet regathers momentum, not through abrupt shifts, but through a kind of collective intuition. Elsewhere, denser sections emerge, where rhythmic fragments overlap and collide, creating a tension that feels both precarious and controlled.
For listeners accustomed to more traditional jazz forms, this can be disorienting. There are no clear themes to hold onto, no predictable structures to follow. That is both the album’s challenge and its strength. It situates itself somewhere between the most intricate strands of European jazz and the expansive compositional sensibilities associated with artists like Maria Schneider. At times, the abstraction risks pushing the listener to the margins; patience is required. But for those willing to engage, the rewards are considerable.
A useful entry point comes midway through the recording, where the interplay briefly settles into a more discernible pulse before dissolving again. It is in these fleeting moments of clarity that the quartet’s cohesion becomes most apparent, offering just enough grounding to draw the listener deeper into its language.
The current formation of the group dates to 2024, when Henrik, Jonny, and Georgia Wartel were joined by Landæus for a tour across Sweden and Norway. Their shared history, particularly Landæus’s connections to the Stockholm jazz scene of the 1990s, made the collaboration feel almost inevitable. The chemistry proved immediate. Celebrating Live was recorded during a concert in Oslo, and it retains the raw, unedited energy of that setting.
Ultimately, the album is best understood as a collective work in the fullest sense. No single voice dominates. Instead, what emerges is a convergence, of generations, of experiences, of musical languages. The differences between the musicians do not divide them; they deepen the conversation.
This is not an easy listen, nor does it try to be. But it is a deeply honest one. In an era where musical boundaries are constantly shifting, Celebrating Live stands as a reminder that the most meaningful explorations often happen in the spaces between categories, where listening becomes an act of trust, and creation begins with the willingness to meet the other halfway.
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, March 27th 2026
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Musicians :
Jonny Wartel | Saxophone
Henrik Wartel | Drums
Mathias Landæus | Piano
Georgia Wartel Collins | Double Bass