Open Waters Jacob Karlzon

• 1 Open Waters 05:06
• 2 Secret Rooms 06:53
• 3 Motion Picture 03:54
• 4 Slave to Grace 06:16
• 5 Ever Changing 05:54
• 6 Look What You Made Me Do 05:29
• 7 How It Ends 05:02
• 8 Panorama 05:34
• 9 Note to Self 03:44
• Total Runtime 47:52

Info for Open Waters

The Swedish jazz pianist and composer Jacob Karlzon creates music for the inner film in his head. This latest album was recorded in January and he says: “I’m happy when people interpret my music this way. I really do want to take them emotionally out to sea, into a situation where they have to decide in which direction they want to swim.”

The album came about in a very intuitive way preceded by a long period of reflection. With Morten Ramsbøl on bass and Rasmus Kihlberg on drums, Karlzon recorded this album, like previous ones, in the Nilento Studio in Göteborg with his producer Lars Nilsson.

Stylistically and musically, Jacob Karlzon is a well-travelled man. He’s a classical pianist but has shared a stage with big names in jazz such as Kenny Wheeler, Norma Winstone, Billy Cobham among others. He forayed into the world of heavy metal with his album “More”, 2012, and in his last album “Now”, he allowed electronic elements to set the pulse. No wonder he prefers to describe himself as an alternative musician.

“The best thing that can happen to you as an artist is to play for people who didn’t know your music before but who are then willing to engage with it.”

To really feel what Jacob Karlzon wants to tell us, it’s enough to listen to “How it Ends” or “Ever Changing” or “Panorama” or because it’s so fitting, “Motion Picture”.

Let Jacob Karlzon provide the score for your inner film and be taken on a very surprising journey.

Jacob Karlzon, piano, keyboards
Rasmus Kihlberg, drums
Morten Ramsbøl, bass

Jacob Karlzon
applies a concrete image when he speaks about his music: “We are modern people with a history, and it is precisely this which is reflected in my music. I am fascinated with the possibilities of new technologies. However, I also need a sense of warmth and a connection with the earth in order to feel happy”. - A wide horizon thus, which also includes unusual facets, especially for a piano virtuose: Metal and electro have their place in his music as well as folk songs from his Swedish homeland. With such an open attitude, Karlzon balances the depths of his musical ideas and achieves vibrant pulsating soundscapes in a spectrum from light to energetic, fragile to powerful, organic to electronic – sometimes all at once. He calls his creations - his ability to bring into harmony his musical skills and preferences – 'technorganic', in a free play of transcending musical borders. It is precisely in this way that he has expanded European jazz in recent years.

His stupendous technique and his tremendous sensibility made him a popular 'sideman' already in his early career. He accompanied stars like Silje Nergaard, Nils Landgren and Viktoria Tolstoy. He shared stage with Billy Cobham, Kenny Wheeler, Norma Winstone, Jeff Ballard and other greats of his genre. And with the growing reputation of his musical play, his own projects also received growing recognition. In 2010 he was awarded the Swedish Django d'Or and was voted Jazz Musician of the Year in Sweden. Being elected into the renowned group of Steinway-Artists in 2012 was an international recognition of excellence.

So far, Karlzon has produced nine albums under his own name, the most recent one, SHINE, under the German ACT Label. Besides solo recordings and quintet productions, he works primarily with his JK3 formation as a creative unit. From the beginning, Hans Andersson has been playing the bass, while in 2013 Robert Mehmet Ikiz joined the band and enriches the group-sound with his great dynamic force.

Jacob Karlzon is always on the search for new places, - not only in his music. After concerts in Europe, JK3 recently toured China and the USA. And despite his rising fame and his journeys to ever more distant countries, he always likes to return to the beginnings of his career and his early musical ideas: 'I got into jazz because I loved improvisation. And this kind of spontaneous play achieves ever new levels in the direct communication with the audience, in the exchange of energy and emotion. Performing live is for me the original place of music – not an educational event, but an ecstatic experience on both sides.

Booklet for Open Waters