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Terje Rypdal — After The Rain (October 1, 1976)

Terje Rypdal — After The Rain (October 1, 1976)

        Terje Rypdal — After The Rain (October 1, 1976)
♣   “This sense of belonging to nature — you can feel it in everything I do”.
Born: 23 August 1947, Oslo
Location: Tresfjord, Norway
Album release: October 1, 1976
Recorded: August 1976 at Talent Studios, Oslo
Record Label: ECM
Genre: Jazz, Fusion, Guitar
Duration:     38:12    
Tracks:
01. Autumn Breeze     4:36
02. Air     4:29
03. Now And Then     2:54
04. Wind     1:26
05. After The Rain     6:09
06. Kjare Maren     4:12
07. Little Bell     1:39
08. Vintage Year     3:49
09. Multer     2:56
10. Like A Child, Like A Song     6:02                                                © Photo credit: Anne Lise Flavik
Musicians:
♣   Terje Rypdal — electric and acoustic guitars, string ensemble, piano, electric piano, soprano sax, flute, tubular bells
♣   Inger Lise Rypdal — voice
Credits:
♣   Engineer — Jan Erik Kongshaug
♣   Layout — Dieter Bonhorst
♣   Photography by — Giuseppe Pino
♣   Photography by [Cover] — Franco Fontana
♣   Producer — Manfred Eicher
♠   With an incendiary initiation on Jan Garbarek’s Afric Pepperbird, and after successfully leading far–reaching experiments like his first self–titled project and the plush Whenever I Seem To Be Far Away, Terje Rypdal opened a new door for ECM when he stepped into the studio to record perhaps his most intimate statement to date. In spite of their brevity, the ten tracks on After The Rain flow in a single 38–minute ode to the almost painful depths of life’s greatest joys. Rypdal overdubs every instrument himself, with his former wife, vocalist Inger Lise, providing the occasional organic touch. Shielded by a holy trinity of intimacy, sincerity, and fearlessness, Rypdal plunges with open eyes into the darkest eddies of his emotional waters.
♠   Norwegian guitarist and composer Terje Rypdal, tone poet of the Fender Stratocaster, was born in Oslo in 1947. The son of a military conductor and clarinettist, Rypdal began piano lessons aged five and took up the trumpet three years later. When he was twelve he began teaching himself the guitar. While still in his teens, he became a member of the Vanguards, a Norwegian instrumental rock group that climbed the local pop charts, and then, after hearing Jimi Hendrix, he formed a psychedelic rock band, Dream, in 1967. But Rypdal’s influences have always been eclectic: he was drawn to the music of Ligeti and Penderecki as well as Coltrane and Miles Davis. He recalled in an interview with Notes on the Road: “I heard Ligeti’s music and I decided then to try to make a living as a composer and guitar player.” Michael Tucker has described “Rypdal’s blending of rock and jazz phrasing with a rubato concern for tone colour and dynamics often redolent of the classical world”.
♠   Rypdal’s relationship with ECM dates back to 1970, when he was part of Jan Garbarek’s quartet on Afric Pepperbird, the saxophonist’s own label debut. Some Rypdal material that didn’t find its way onto Garbarek’s Sart the following year led ECM’s Manfred Eicher to suggest Rypdal record his own album, thereby beginning one of the label’s most fertile and long–lasting collaborations. Rypdal’s eponymous debut as leader was recorded that same year.
♠   A 3–CD set released in 2012, Odyssey in Studio & in Concert, brought together some landmark early Rypdal recordings from the mid–1970s. A BBC review identified in the set “shades of prog, psychedelia and a foretaste of Rypdal’s later atmospheric tone poems”. A logn series of collaborations with fellow ECM artists have followed, including Palle Mikkelborg, Jon Christensen, Miroslav Vitous, Jack DeJohnette and John Surman.
♠   Yet, having studied composition with Finn Mortensen, he is also a prolific composer, with an opus list that includes six symphonies, choral and chamber music and pieces for mixed groups of classical players and improvisers. Undisonus received critical acclaim on its release in 1990 and won Work of the Year prize from the Society of Norwegian Composers. ECM released an album featuring his Double Concerto/5th Symphony in 1998 and Lux Aeterna in 2000, an intense, personal celebration of nature, light and the mountains of Rypdal’s childhood.
Label: https://www.ecmrecords.com/                                                                   © Photo credit: Roberto Masotti
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Terje Rypdal — After The Rain (October 1, 1976)

ALBUM COVERS XI.