| Jazz |
When Viktoria Tolstoy released the luminous Letters to Herbie back in 2011, the album felt like a revelation, one of those rare works that manages to sound both intimately crafted and effortlessly airborne. I remember the first listen as one remembers the first snowfall of the season: bright, delicate, quietly astonishing. The albums that followed never quite recaptured that level of magic, though they remained thoroughly pleasant and often admirable. But this new project, Who We Are, arriving in January, left me with a peculiar hollowness, the kind that prompts you to replay a track not out of pleasure but out of disbelief that nothing memorable has lodged in your mind.
And yet, the premise suggested something far more promising. “Viktoria Tolstoy and pianist/keyboardist Jacob Karlzon have been close collaborators and friends for nearly thirty years,” the press release proclaims. “So when they title their album Who We Are, it is more than a name: it is a declaration. A musical self-portrait built on mutual trust and decades of artistic connection.”
On the page, this sounds like the beginning of a major chapter in their shared journey, a distillation of identity, a moment of truth, a turning point.
But some turning points lead not to breakthroughs, but to liminal spaces, rooms between rooms, corridors neither here nor there. That is precisely the sensation the album conveys: the sense of an in-between work, a creative chrysalis that has not yet produced the butterfly.
The opening track, an electro-jazz construction, immediately unsettles. Tolstoy’s voice, naturally luminous, with a timbre that rarely needs embellishment, is submerged under puzzling digital effects that seem to pull her tone apart molecule by molecule. Instead of creating modernity or tension, the processing thins out the emotional core of her phrasing. The keyboard lines, meanwhile, lean toward textures reminiscent of 1980s electro-pop, but without the full embrace of that aesthetic. It feels like a gesture toward nostalgia without the courage to fully inhabit it. I couldn’t make it to the end. I moved on.
The second track offers an abrupt shift back to Karlzon’s familiar acoustic piano, clean, poised, introspective. Tolstoy, freed of the electronic haze, returns to her usual mastery. But the composition itself, for all its elegance, lacks urgency. It is beautifully executed but emotionally static, like a well-lit photograph of a landscape that demands movement. Hoping for deeper resonance, I turned to the title track, “Who We Are,” expecting the conceptual heart of the album to reveal itself.
It never does.
The monotony, soft, drifting, deceptively poetic, stretches on. Nothing is technically wrong, but very little is compelling. The music seems to hover, undecided between introspective jazz minimalism and a lightly electronic veneer that neither enriches nor transforms the material. Halfway through the track, the effects return, subtle, but distracting, as if inserted to fill a space that the composition itself leaves unresolved.
Track follows track; the ennui accumulates. A few songs later, we are back in that strange electro-jazz terrain, this time more insistently. But again, the aesthetic is underdeveloped. If the duo had committed fully, gone all in with rhythmic layering, textural depth, a more ambitious electronic architecture—the experiment might have cohered. Instead, the electronics float like mist, offering atmosphere without conviction.
By the sixth track I stopped, not out of irritation but out of a subdued, perplexed fatigue. Before writing these lines I revisited those six tracks several times, determined to find an anchoring emotion, a spark, something that would justify the conceptual ambition. I didn’t find it.
What remains, then, is the impression of a transitional album, one of those works that devoted fans will perhaps decipher more successfully than I could. Both Tolstoy and Karlzon are extraordinary artists; their partnership has yielded remarkable music over the years. But even remarkable artists must sometimes traverse valleys between summits. Who We Are feels like such a valley: introspective, hesitant, exploratory, but ultimately unfinished.
Technically speaking, the album suffers from two primary faults. First, the decision to apply effects to Tolstoy’s voice, an instrument inherently rich and self-sufficient, diminishes rather than enhances her expressive power. Second, the electro-jazz direction is only half-formed. Either they needed a full band, a true electronic architecture, something muscular and expansive, or they needed to remain in the acoustic clarity that has long been their strength. By splitting the difference, they lose both worlds.
And yet, despite everything, I respect the attempt. Artistic evolution is rarely linear; it is more often a tangle of detours, hesitations, experiments that fail before they teach. This album, I suspect, will eventually be seen as a necessary misstep, a document of artistic transition rather than culmination.
For me, Who We Are will fade quickly from memory. But I salute the gesture, the risk, the willingness to wander. Art is an unkind road, and not every mile is meant to dazzle. Some are simply meant to lead elsewhere.
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, December 6th 2025
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Musicians:
Viktoria Tolstoy: vocals
Jacob Karlzon: piano, keyboards, programming
Tracking list :
01 Satellites (Jacob Karlzon) 05:02
02 Who We Are (Karlzon) 06:05
03 And So It Goes (Billy Joel) 03:54
04 Cloud on My Tongue (Tori Amos) 04:33
05 The Great Escape (Karlzon) 05:09
06 Off-White (Karlzon) 07:30
07 Trigger Warning (Karlzon) 05:50
08 Stay (Karlzon) 05:28
09 Fallen Empire (Karlzon) 05:41
10 Let There Be Love (Karlzon) 05:40
11 True Love Waits (Radiohead) 04:26
Recorded at Musikaliska Kvarteret, Stockholm, August 25 & 26, 2025, by Lars Nilsson
Additional recordings at ChassRoom
Mixed and mastered at Nilento Studio by Lars Nilsson
Nilento team: Lars Nilsson, Michael Dalvid, and Jenny Nilsson
Produced by Jacob Karlzon & Lars Nilsson
Jacob Karlzon is a Steinway Artist
Cover art by Katja Strunz
The ACT Agency presents: Viktoria Tolstoy & Jacob Karlzon live 2026
20.02. Gothenburg (SE) Playhouse
21.03. Dötlingen (DE) Kultur hinterm Feld
22.03. Kassel (DE) Jazzfrühling, Theaterstübchen
24.04. Essen (DE) Jazz & so @ Schmitz, Marienforum
25.04. Minden (DE) Jazz Club Minden
27.06. Neuhardenberg (DE) Sänger*innentreffen, Schlosspark
15.10. Odense (DK) Dexter
14.11. Herdecke (DE) Werner Richard, Dr. Carl Dörken Stiftung
More concerts in planning