Throughout his career spanning more than 30 years, Lars Møller has expanded his musical expression, stretched between the West and the East, between Scandinavian thoughtfulness, robust American jazz and emotive Indian modalities and rhythmic patterns.

In 2019, a special encounter took place between Lars Møller. NDR Bigband and Palle Mikkelborg. The output can be heard on a new album, reflecting Møller's exploration of jazz and Indian music, and combining spacious improvised passages and dense orchestrations, which creates a timeless soundscape. Echoes will be released on 24 January on CD and streaming. Pre-save the album via this link.

A soulful meeting

Lars Møller calls this release Echoes,  for the music is the ‘reverberation’ of the artistic, human and spiritual encounter that took place between the composer and
conductor, NDR Bigband’s colouristic orchestra and Palle Mikkelborg’s soulful presence. "The music is imbued with Palle Mikkelborg’s profound musical
spirit, which has been a driving force throughout the project", Møller says.

With Echoes, Lars Møller’s orchestral music becomes more unfolded than before. We hear the contrast between, on the one hand, the spaciousness and air in the subdued and improvised passages, and on the other hand, the condensed orchestrations with both dancing pulse and tonal finesse.

Tribute to Indian music and a Danish folk song

The three-part suite Echoes of India is the musical focal point of the album and a tribute to Indian music. Palle Mikkelborg opens the first part with a spellbinding introduction that sets the scene before the orchestra’s rhythm section carries the pulse forward. The second part offers touching moments with an improvisation between Palle Mikkelborg and pianist Florian Weber, and the suite concludes with a short movement, in which Mikkelborg’s concluding notes seem to fade into eternity.

The album also presents one of Møller’s most well-known compositions, Folk Song No. 1, which is based on the Danish song ‘Marken er mejet’ (‘The Field Is Harvested’). In this revised arrangement, the music’s flow of joy and energy is emphasised, which also suits the original folk song’s celebration of harvest time with song and dance.

Human perspectives

Lars Møller himself is opening the album in the work Salt with a humming and reflective raga atmosphere, where he uses his tenor saxophone as a shehnai, a traditional oboe-like instrument, which he has studied in New Delhi. Salt is like a slow wave rising and the title brings forward reflection on Mahatma Gandhi and his Salt March in 1930, which was an action against the British colonial rule’s monopoly on salt production.

Brazilian Aria also contains a human perspective. The melody comes from a well-known Brazilian folk song, which was reportedly sung by enslaved Brazilians when they witnessed the punishment of other slaves. Pain and suffering are the subtext of the beautiful melody, which in this recording is given an airy and wistful expression. Palle Mikkelborg is a fragile melody bearer, and Florian Weber contributes a strong and poetic piano solo.