Oslo Jazz Ensemble with Ola Kvernberg

Music for big occasions, like this one! Ola Kvernberg met the Oslo Jazz Ensemble for the first time during the pandemic year 2021. The venue was Oslo Jazz Festival, and it resulted in two concerts in a row in front of a limited, but very music-hungry, audience. The meeting between Kvernberg, the Oslo Jazz Ensemble and music arranger Martin Myhre Olsen led Aftenposten's music critic Arild R. Andersen to conclude "can't remember ever hearing Ola Kvernberg better". Ola Kvernberg is one of our most agile musicians, in a broad and uncompromising genre perspective, both on the fiddle and as a music creator. His list of achievements is long, with awards of most kinds, not least for film music. The pandemic-era meeting between Ola and the large format of the Oslo Jazz Ensemble was his first collaboration as soloist and composer with a large jazz orchestra. Kvernberg composed the suite Ballroom especially for the Oslo Jazz Ensemble and the majestic Marmorsalen at Sentralen. In addition, he let Martin Myhre Olsen put music from Liarbird and Mechanical Fair under his creative lens. The result is a repertoire that appears unmistakably Kvernbergian, and with excellent resilience for Myhre Olsen's rough jazz arrangements. The concert at Victoria will end up as a live release, so if you've always dreamed of immortalizing your enthusiastic cheers and applause, just get yourself a ticket.