Jan Gabarek, “Red Wind”, 1996, “Visible World” Album, ECM Records, Münich, Germany

Born at Mysen, Østfol in March of 1947, Jan Garbarek is a Norwegian jazz saxophonist who creates work in the classical and world music genres. The only child of former Polish prisoner of war Czeslaw Garbarek and his wife, Jan Garbarek grew up in Oslo as a stateless resident until the age of seven, at which time he was granted  Norwegian citizenship. In 1968 at the age of twenty-one, Garbarek married Vigdis Garbarek, lecturer and author of the 1994 “The Way to Your Self”. Their daughter is Anja Garbarek, a singer and songwriter who created the soundtrack for French filmmaker Luc Besson’s 2005 fantasy drama “Angel-A”. 

Garbarek began his recording career in the late 1960s with work based on the recordings of American jazz composer and theorist George Russell. In 1969, he composed all the tracks on his “Esoteric Circle” album that featured guitarist Terje Rypdal, bassist Arild Andersen, and drummer Jon Christensen. After recording four more albums in the same style, Garbarek discarded the harsh dissonances of avant-garde jazz and gained wider recognition for his work with pianist and composer Keith Jarrett’s European Quartet. 

Featuring Keith Jarrett, Garbarek, bassist Palle Danielsson and drummer Christensen, the European Quartet produced two albums, the 1974 “Belonging” and 1977 “My Song”, as well as two live recordings, “Personal Mountains” and “Nude Ants”, both in 1979. Garbarek was a featured soloist on Keith Jarret’s works for orchestra, the 1974 “Luminessence: Music for String Orchestra and Saxophone” with the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra and the 1979 “Arbour Zena” which featured Garbarek and bassist Charlie Haden backed by the Stuttgart Orchestra. 

Jan Garbarek was influenced in his early career by avant-garde jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler’s unorthodox improvisational style. He also draws inspiration from the traditional folk melodies of the Scandinavian region. Garbarek’s textual approach to jazz rejects the traditional notions of improvisation through a thematic approach, as exemplified by the work of Sonny Rollins; he favors a more meandering style that is more sculptural in both form and impact. Among the recordings Gabarek produced in this style is the 1978-79 “Photo with Blue Sky, White Cloud, Wires, Window and a Red Roof” with guitarist Bill Connors, pianist Josh Taylor, double bassist Eberhard Weber and drummer Jon Christensen.

A continuation of his experimental approach to music, Gabarek’s fusion of instrumental and choral sounds into a jazz framework became part of genre known as new-age music. One of these experiments involved setting a collection of Norwegian poet Olav Håkonson Hauge’s poetry to music with Gabarek’s saxophone complimenting a fully mixed choir. This work was performed live several times with the award-winning Grex Vocalis, a twelve-member Norwegian chamber choir formed by musician and conductor Carl Halvor Høgset.

Jan Gabarek’s music expanded in the 1980s with its incorporation of synthesizers and elements of traditional world music. His December 1980 album “Eventyr” featured jazz guitarist John Abercrombie and Brazilian percussionist Naná Vasconcelos who also played the berimbau, a traditional Angolan musical single-stringed bow with gourd resonator. The 1988 album “Legend of the Seven Dreams”, whose melody is based on a traditional Lapp joik of Sámi culture, featured Gabarek on saxophones and flute, Rainer Brüninghaus on electronic keyboards, Eberhard Weber on bass, and Vasconcelos on percussion and vocals.

In the 1990s, Gabarek collaborated with Indian and Pakistani musicians including Indian percussionist Trilok Gurtu, Indian classical flautist and bansuri player Hariprasad Chaurasia, Indian tabla player Ustad Zakir Hussain, and Pakistani vocalist Bade Fateh Ali Khan. During the period when Gregorian chanting was highly popular, Gabarek produced his 1994 “Officium”, a collaboration with the early vocal group Hilliard Ensemble, a British male quartet whose work focused on music from the Medieval and Renaissance periods. One of ECM Records’s best selling albums, “Officium”  and its sequel, “Mnemosyne”, reached the pop charts in several countries. 

In 1999, Jan Gabarek composed the original music score for Israeli director Amos Gitai’s 2000 war drama film “Kippur” which explored the issues of war, politics and human rescue. Gabarek’s 2005 album “In Praise of Dreams”, with Gabarek on saxophones and synthesizers, Kim Kashkashian on viola, and Manu Ktaché on percussion, received a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Jazz Album. In 2009, Gabarek released his first live album “Dresden”, a double-album featuring Gabarek, Katché, Brüninghaus and new member Yuri Daniel, a Brazilian bassist. The recording was done in October of 2007 at the Alter Schlachthof in Dresden, Germany.

Notes: The Jan Gabarek Quartet continues to perform throughout the world at many major jazz festivals. In 2024, the quartet will be performing in May at the Zürich’s Kongresshaus, November at the CC Weimarhalle in Weimar and the Elbphillharmonie in Hamburg, Germany, and at Münich’s Prinzregententheater in December. Tickets can be found at Perto.com: https://en.perto.com/artist/jan-garbarek-2445/

“Red Wind” is the first track on the 1996 “Visible World” which featured bassist Eberhard Weber; percussionists Trilok Gurtu, Marilyn Mazur and Manu Katché; and pianist Rainer Brüninghaus. For this album, Gabarek worked in a recording studio where he composed many of the album’s tracks from layers of the musicians’ bass and percussions as well as his soprano and tenor saxophones.

The video features Zen artist Nikolai Jelneronov, a master sumi-e painter. Sumi-e painting is a type of Chinese ink-brush painting that uses washes of black ink. It emerged during the Tang Dynasty (608-907 AD) and overturned China’s earlier and more realistic techniques. Sumi-e painting flourished in China and, later, Japan after its introduction by Zen Buddhists in the fourteenth-century.