High, Low or In Between

Nordic Council Prize winner 2015

Svante Henryson, the Swedish cellist, composer, double bass and electric bass guitar player, has been awarded the Nordic Council Music Award of some 50'000 Dollars in a ceremony on Iceland. Starting as a double-bass player in the Oslo Phil, he continued as a rock musician in one of Sweden's more famous hard rock bands, while at all times exploring the classical cello in his own imaginative way, fusing the classical with impulses from other genres.
I have deeply admired him for many years, but only when hearing him and his singing wife Katarina (of Real Group fame) at a private party, had the chance to really approach them with a recording idea. This materialized and the SACD was recentky released.
We take this opportunity to re-present it at very favourable conditions here and now for a few days.
Congratulations, Svante! Way to go!!!
And congrats to the Nordic Council for a choice, as excellent as it is daring!

Robert von Bahr

As individual musicians, Katarina and Svante Henryson have carved out quite extraordinary careers: Katarina touring internationally as a member of the highly successful Swedish vocal ensemble The Real Group, and Svante appearing in the most varied collaborations – on the cello, double bass and electric bass, and as performer, arranger and composer – with musicians as diverse as Elvis Costello, Anne Sofie von Otter, Chico Freeman and Martin Fröst. The duo they form together, on the other hand, has been a more private affair, performing for their relatives at christenings and weddings, at birthdays and funerals. One reason for this has been the fact that they don’t only share a surname, but also two children, and when one of them toured professionally the other would have to be at home. Their duo repertoire has grown from zero to CD at the same pace as their children – and now the time has come to ‘go public’. Representing their own broad musical tastes, the repertoire is as varied as it gets: it is truly ‘High, Low or In Between’, with pop songs by Elton John and George Harrison rubbing shoulders with Prince’s funk hit Kiss, Bill Evans’s jazz classic Waltz for Debby and Tom Jobim’s bossa nova Chega de Saudade. These last two Katarina performs in the versions made immortal by the Swedish jazz singer Monica Zetterlund, while a third song to a Swedish text, Det växer från Edens tider, also displays its Swedish origins proudly through its folk-like idiom. A handful of tracks consist of original material by the performers themselves – Eyes of a Child they wrote together after the birth of their son – including three cello improvisations and Svante’s instrumental piece Green. In these, Svante’s cello – and his very special treatment of it – steals the spotlight, but in fact it plays such a major role throughout the programme that it becomes a third, equal partner of the duo!