molvaer.de:

Es war ein sehr schönes Konzert heute hier im Kölner Stadtgarten !
Durch einen Freund bin ich 2003 auf  Deine Platte  "9866" aufmerksam geworden (zu der Zeit gab es www.molvaer.de noch nicht) und habe später erst festgestellt, dass dort Nils Petter Molvaer auf zwei Stücken mitspielt. Wie kam es zu dieser Zusammenarbeit ?

Alex Gunia:

Ich habe den Nils Petter angerufen, irgendwann.
Ich hatte das schon länger im Kopf, dass ich das mal machen will.

molvaer.de:

Kanntet ihr euch vorher schon ?

Alex Gunia:

Nein, nein, gar nicht. Ich habe die Handy-Nr. bekommen - und da habe ich lange für gebaggert: ich habe eine Nacht durchgesoffen mit einem norwegischen Toningenieur - und ich trinke echt keinen Alkohol sonst - aber das war die Chance. Wir haben da auf so einem Festival gespielt und ich hörte, da ist  ein Norweger, ein bisschen unnorwegisch extrovertiert, und ich sagte "let's drink a little bit" und dann haben wir die ganze Nacht getrunken und irgendwann habe ich gesagt "jetzt zeig mal, was du kannst und gib mir mal die Handy-Nr. von Nils Petter". und er antwortete " hab ich nicht, kann ich aber besorgen". Und dann habe ich den ein par Mal angesimst, bis ich die Nr. hatte......     

                                                  hier geht es weiter .....

molvaer.de:
It was a very beautiful concert today here in Cologne Stadtgarten! In 2003 a friend recommended your album "9866" (at that time www.molvaer.de was not online) and it was only later I realised that Nils Petter Molvaer played on two pieces there. How did this co-operation come about?
Alex Gunia:
I just called Nils Petter sometimes. I had it in mind to do it already.

molvaer.de:
Did you know each other before ?
Alex Gunia:
No, no, not at all. I got his mobile phone-number - and I had to dig to get it: I had one drunken night with a Norwegian sound engineer - and I honestly drink no alcohol otherwise - however that was my chance. We played at a festival and I heard that there was an un-Norwegian-like extroverted Norwegian, and I said to him "let's have a drink" and then drank the whole night. At some point in between I said "now, tell me: what is Nils Petter’s mobile phone-number“. He answered "I don’t have it, but I can get it". After I got the number I sent him (Nils Petter) several SMS.



                                                                                                        contd. here .... 

Dear molvaer.de, 

well, Internet sometimes make this world rather small - I sweep around sometimes, amused (and a little proud) to see how my son's music 
is welcomed in different places.

I have just visited the website molvaer.de, and I am very impressed by what you have listed over my son's carriere so far.

But I must also point at a very serious error that has been done, about a church consert in 1997 at the Molde Jazz Festival: 
the cover and the text says that this consert was done with Brass Brothers and Silje, Nils Petter and myself were soloists. 
This is wrong. The orchestra that had the consert was YTRE SULÖENS JASS-ENSEMBLE (which is the band I am a part of, founded in 1973). 

If you're interested, the whole story goes like this: 
Silje Nergard was hired as soloist with us together with Swedish Jazz-star Arne Domnerus. The day before the conserts we got message 
that Mr. Domnerus became ill. Nils Petter was then in his parents house at Sula (not far from Molde) on vacation, and I asked him if he 
could step in for Domnerus. He did, and the concert was a great success.

I think the date were July 3rd 1997, and the record were made from the mixing board at the conserts. I have it myself - how you got it is a mystery for me, but of course I don`t mind at all. But it was one of the rare times son and dad performing together, at least in the later years -.

Some of the members in Brass Brothers played in this band many years ago, and that might be what caused this confusion. But please correct this, as the YSJ is still cookin' - and neither us or BB likes to be mixed up this way. (Nils Petter has never played with Brass Brothers, and the cover you show of my good music friends is from a consert with chinese or japanese drummers they had, also at Molde Jazz Festival.)

sincerely yours
Jens Arne Molvær

Jens Arne Molvær with Nils Petter Molvær: "September Song"

more information on Jens Arne Molvær: Ytre Suløen Jass Ensemble and the Brazz Brothers

'Welcome to Us': A History by Dénnis Gonzáles
 
In March of 1991, my group, the Dennis González New Dallas Quartet (Dennis González – trumpet / John Purcell – saxophones / W.A. Richardson – drums / Henry Franklin – bass) traveled to Scandinavia to play the VossaJazz Festival in Voss, Norway. We had recorded our first CD, Stefan, for Silkheart Records in Stockholm, and the festival was enthusiastic about presenting this quartet in Europe for the first time.
I had long been a fan of Norwegian jazz musicians, and had just recently heard of Nils Petter Molvaer, who played VossaJazz that same year 
with Sidsel Endresen. They were featuring the music from Endresen's first ECM release, So I Write.
 
The musicians all stayed in the same hotel and ate their meals at the same smorgasbord, and eventually I was introduced to Nils Petter Molvær by guitarist Terje Rypdal. We talked for a while about many things, and ended the conversation with the promise to record together in soon.March of 1992.
 
The next 2 years were very, very busy for me, as I took many musical tours in Europe, Central America, and the US. During that time I met the director of the Kraków Youth Orchestra, from Kraków, Poland. I was invited to be a special guest of the Orchestra's when they played in Dallas, Texas, where I live. It was decided that I should travel to Kraków in March of 1993 to work with the Youth Orchestra as well as to teach jazz and improvisation workshops to university students there. One of the things I did to keep track of all that happened was to write a journal, and this journal, which eventually became a book of travel and jazz poetry, Cú, was the basis for the words spoken by Sidsel Endresen on the CD, Welcome to Us.
 
Nils Petter Molvær and I had planned that when I was finished with my work in Kraków, I would go to Oslo and record a CD (with me on C trumpet; Nils Petter on Bb trumpet; along with Sidsel Endresen, Lena Maria Petterson, and Bodil Niska on voice; Pål Thöwsen on drums; 
Terje Gewelt on bass; and Bugge Wesseltoft on keyboards). On the 20th of March all of the group, except Niska and Petterson, gathered at Waterfall Studio to record the music. The group had decided not to rehearse the music, but instead, to go into the studio and play the music fresh and untainted by having played it previously. All had arrived at the studio at the correct time, except for Wesseltoft, who was up in the north of Norway...the group told me he was hunting, but I didn't know if they were joking with me or not.

photo by Dénnis González of Nils Petter Molvaer 

at Waterfall Studio, Oslo, Norway,  March 20, 1993

We decided to start without him, and the resulting piece is the “Song for a Poet”, which is the only piece we did without him, and which, 
for some reason, was mixed in mono instead of stereo, and which I had to re-master in a pseudo-stereo when I returned to the US. 
If you listen carefully, you can hear the result.
 
As soon as Wesseltoft arrived, we realized that some of the piano notes were out of tune with the rest of the piano, and so he had to be very careful to avoid the notes. Since we didn't have time to tune the piano, we chose to phase some of Bugge's solos with a phaseshifter, which actually gave the piano a quite modern feel, linking the straight piano sound to the synthesizer used by Wesseltoft. Listen especially to the piano solo on “Kraków na Wiosnę” to hear this.
 
At the end of the session, I asked the group to improvise an ambience in order for Sidsel to recite some of the words from my journal, and though she had to read my terrible writing, those pieces became the most haunting and beautiful of the CD, “Rail” and “Warszawa”. 
Nils Petter told me later that he and Sidsel had not worked together for quite some time, and that this recording brought them together again.
 
The next day, Lena Maria Pettersen and Bodil Niska, who is known as a saxophonist in Norway, went into the studio and sang the Norwegian folk song, “Over Birkerot (Jumping over the Birchtree Roots)”, and which I was going to orchestrate later for the CD, but which unfortunately never happened.
 
One of the more moving times of the recording was when Sidsel was about to record the voice portion of “Song for a Singer”, and felt very unsure of herself. The windows were opened to let in some fresh almost-spring air...this was the day before Spring Equinox...and the young Afghan refugee children were playing outside and riding their bicycles in the courtyard of the recording studio. She was so happy to hear their voices, and sad as well because we all knew what they had endured, that she gathered her courage and recorded the voice at the same time that the voices from the children came in the window. It was a bittersweet moment.
 
Nils Petter talked to Manfred Eicher to try to get him to put this recording on ECM, but at this time ECM was already carrying the musicians that Eicher wanted for his label, and so the Polish label Gowi decided to press the CD. A few years later, Koch Jazz in New York offered to put the CD out as well. The CD is now out of print. A few copies can be found from time to time online or in secondhand record stores. If you would like a CD-R copy, please go to my ordering page and I will make a copy for you: http://hometown.aol.com/dennisgonzalezx/ordernow.html, or just e-mail me at dennisgonzalezx@aol.com.  

Dennis González
Dallas, Texas
December 22, 2004

more information at

http://members.aol.com/dennisgonzalezx/myhomepage/tunes.html  
http://www.dennisgonzalez.com/ 

read also: 

a Dennis Gonzales interview in jazz webzine 'onefinalnote'  over 3 pages gives us light from every corner in his life.