This is a very different kind of music. This does not mean that it is an avant-garde venture. The Swedish avant-garde has become a tradition unto itself and strictly about itself, so nothing viable can come out of that iron fist fellowship, except in rare and exceptional cases.

The truly different and new sprouts and blooms where the intention has not been focused on achieving something out of the ordinary; but where the need to express has grown into a relentless desire, a force that requires release. When there is a violent need for expression, the means don’t matter. I feel this urge in Staffan Odenhall’s compositions. They’re beyond calculation. They reveal a basic need to communicate something important and vulnerably human.

It seems to me that Odenhall’s choice of music for his expressivity happened just by chance; that this outpour of thoughts and feelings and atmosphere – this artistic invocation of the elusive core of the human predicament - could as well have reached his fellow men through poetry or painting or notes jotted down through shamanistic experiences of extended hikes in Lapland! This is music that is true to itself, without side glances or considerations. That is why Odenhall’s oeuvre feels so fresh, pristine, wholesome – in a way therapeutic – and completely new.

Staffan Odenhall talks briefly about the background of his works on this CD in the accompanying booklet, in an interview conducted by Joakim Milder, translated by Isabel Thomson:

The Trumpet Concerto opens in a jubilant, transparent candy bar kind of dreamscape, light, airy touches with instrumental paint over a canvas sky that is light blue, dawn blue, almost pale. The same figure is repeated and shaded in the orchestra, and the piano treads carefully like a cat, mystically through the beats of time; a philosophical, intensely meditative hue in the coloring.

This all slows down and thins out into a Photoshop filter that is rendered a particular transparency, until the composer pulls the lever some to thicken the layer, or sometimes the opposite, thinning it out into oblivion.

However, the music densifies, the piano trickles blue raindrops, as from a roof in spring, beads of jubilant blue prayers shaped by the joint/opposing forces of gravity and surface tension – giving me an unforeseen insight into the make-up of this concerto: a music that is conceived through gravity and surface tension – and LOTS of light that shimmers, and yes, this concerto pulls and pinches, elbows itself ahead in a staggering tour de force that at times halts in sudden sunny forest meadows where the silence is illuminated, seasoned with the high-pitch chirps of golden-crested wrens up the spruces; needle-sharp incisions into the soundscape… and Odenhall’s Trumpet Concerto stops in its tracks briefly, until it storms out into the meadow, dancing round and around in the sun, arms outstretched; a happy reception of the energy that travels from the eight-.minute distant star and works the wonders of the mysterious DNA instructions scribbled into our cells, temporarily molding light and water and earth into these human anatomies that inhabit the Third Planet!

I have a direct sense of how this music celebrates the act of creation that is ever ongoing in space, in our hearts and in our minds, in the very least of our intentions, in our daily choices, for better or for worse…

In some places inside this Trumpet Concerto journey, I hear resemblances of Anders Eliasson’s Ostacoli glittering like lakes in the forest, as played by the Ostbothnian Chamber Orchestra in some decisive strokes of the strings, almost staccato-like in there limping gate. I don’t even think that Odenhall is aware of this. Some of Eliasson’s compositional traits have become integrated with the expressive involuntarities of a whole generation of composers, so it’s quite natural that this is resounding at times in Odenhall’s writing.

The second movement of Odenhall’s Trumpet Concerto opens in a slow and meditative, inward walk through an orchard. All the fragrances of fall amongst the apple trees are there; the wet grass, the brown leaves on the ground, the dormant waiting for something, for someone – for yourself?
The piano sketches this environment with the aid of the vibraphone, until soaring, deep strings and the trumpet joins in; a trumpet on the wings of Miles Davis, the most lyrical Miles Davis. It is very, very beautiful, in shades and nuances of delicacy, in an essence of both classical and jazz writing; amazingly light-hearted in the midst of melancholy, the way you may feel when you’ve lost your lover and you’re just starting to get over it; when you suddenly realize that you’ve had an uninterrupted night’s sleep for the first time in months; when the colors start to return to your world, when you stand absolutely still out among the apple trees in late October and feel the warmth of your anatomy: this is what I feel in this second movement, which, in its own peculiar way not only brings Miles Davis into focus, but also the composer Rolf Matinsson’s work Dreams on Daphne Records, especially the section where Jacques Werup recites his poem At the End of Time… because the atmosphere is identical here in the second movement of Odenhall’s Trumpet Concerto – and again; it is SO beautiful, engaging: you can’t listen and not be touched.

The third movement again recites those Ostacoli figures, but in might and strength, drums beating and other instruments falling in with the harsh statements. Shortly Stockholm Session Strings paint in soaring, murmuring dark brown hues, while a pointillist application of notes by the other players glitter like occasional dew drops on the branches of fall, when the day is short and the thoughts are deep.
Odenhall rakes the garden with the gravel harp audio of the double bass, as the different sections of the rest of the orchestra fall into a repetitious canon game, emitting a solid statement that needs saying, over and over in shifting orchestral dialects, amassing strength and power, finishing on top of a mountain of forceful orchestral might, in which all the glittering details, however, are still clearly perceptible.

In the same interview from which I quoted the composer above, Staffan Odenhall talks about his Concerto for Alto Saxophone, which is also called the Fugitive:

The Fugitive commences ever so carefully, even hesitantly, in staccato pointillism, one note being hit irregularly and erratically by a growing number of instruments, the alto saxophone joining in, prying the boards and the planks of the musical stubbornness open after a while, gradually bending the In C beat out of order – but I still get minimalist Terry Riley analogies from this start of the concerto. Certainly there is a manic trait to this – for a while. I even come to think of Steve Reich for a moment, and a band called Piano Circus, or, to stretch things some; Louis Andriessen and his De Staat. Reich is completely uninteresting and boring to me, while I don’t have anything against the other associations that Odenhall instigates.

Everything succumbs to the overwhelming force and might of some sections of the piece, but as the thunder stops every now and then, more delicate tonal figures dance between the thunder clouds, like dragonflies hovering over water lilies on humid days of August.

The staccato stumbling and limping permeates most of the first movement of the Fugitive, though, as if the man fleeing was wounded, dragging himself along across Odenhall’s score, leaving a trail of blood on the paper, as the music spins in and out of reality, like someone almost falling asleep, dreaming and then waking up, only to fall back into dreams.

The second movement is much more dreamy, lyrical, introspective and, like some parts of the Trumpet Concerto, incredibly beautiful, compelling.
The saxophone paints elegant and withheld figures in gold and ochre over the horizon, for anyone to interpret, and I receive a vision of a Mediterranean boy god with golden locks on an ancient shore, cumulus clouds bubbling white, the sky in a southern blue – reality etched on time!

The introspective atmosphere is the dominant property of the second movement of the Alto Saxophone Concerto, and it brings me there, into inner worlds that mix the nuances of remorse and acceptance, of my own harsh views on myself and my own hard-earned forgiveness of myself… maybe…

The flute that sings like a crane from misty fields is filled with longing, and it inspires visions on the inside of my eyelids of a dancer on a stage, reaching up, up, up, dancing elegantly on his toes in a ballet of desire that describes so much of our life on this planet.

The last movement talks, chatters – is very conversational – or monologic, perhaps, since the saxophone talks fast and unchallenged, as the orchestra simply provides a soundscape for the alto to act within. This does not last, for other instruments begins to talk back just as fast and feverish, in some kind of heated argument – or maybe they’re just discussing how to handle the sudden situation that the arriving alto saxophone caused with its message from distant places. Completely oblivious of Odenhall’s work comments, I regard the saxophone as a messenger here, causing a havoc in the village – or maybe he is a bee that comes back to the hive and dances the direction to a field with lots of honey!

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