Going To Pieces

- Without Falling Apart

After a long absence, jazz patriarch Palle Mikkelborg, one of the undisputed founders of the Nordic Sound, returns with a full-length composition featuring the artistry of Helen Davies (harp), Michala Petri (recorder) and the strings of the South Jutland Symphony Orchestra conducted by Henrik Vagn Christensen. Conceived as a deeply personal “Ein Heldenleben” of sorts, Mikkelborg’s “Going To Pieces - Without Falling Apart” takes us on a journey through the “over-tones, where we all recognize each other’s deepest desires despite our more earth-bound differences.”

With more than a hundred published credits and a lifetime of extraordinary collaborations with the greatest creative musicians of the 20th including Gil Evans, Terje Rypdal, Ian Garbarek, Gary Peacock, Shankar, Don Cherry, George Russell, Dexter Gordon, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, and Bill Evans, not to mention his seminal Grammy award winning composition for Miles Davis, “Aura”, Mikkelborg is unquestionably one of the most influential and visionary voices in contemporary music. “Going To Pieces…” reflects his life-long journey, through the sonic realms of progressive jazz, contemporary classical and world music idioms.

The recording concludes with a special Bonus Track; “Afterthoughts” – a live improvisation on themes from “Going To Pieces…” featuring Mikkelborg’s trumpet and live electronics sensitively manipulated by master producer Thomas Li, the whole project, lovingly captured by Denmark’s wizard of sound, Preben Iwan.

  • Michala Petri has performed more than 4000 concerts in the worlds leading festivals and Concert Halls,and has broken down the boundaries of her instrument, the recorder.. Since youth she has followed her wish for musical expansion in various ways, through commissioning more than 150 new works, - including more than 30 recorder concertos, through dialogue with other musical cultures and through developing new playing techniques.

    Recorder

    Michala Petri

  • Helen Davies´s career as a harpist is diverse and eclectic.

    Harp

    Helen Davies

  • A touring regional orchestra with 65 permanent musicians the South Jutland Symphony Orchestra was established in 1963 and gave its first concert on September 22 of that year.

    Orchestra

    South Jutland Symphony Orchestra

  • Henrik Vagn Christensen, born 1963, is educated at the Royal Academies of Music in Aalborg, Aarhus and Copenhagen with Jorma Panula, Frans Rasmussen and Tamas Vetö. Furthermore he studied in Stockholm and London before his debut concert in 1994 with Copenhagen Philharmonic.

    Conductor

    Henrik Vagn Christensen

  • Palle Mikkelborg is a trumpeter, and conductor, and one of the finest representatives in this country of the fusion of jazz and modern classical composition music.

    Composer / trumpet

    Palle Mikkelborg

Reviews

Going To Pieces

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Music Web International (UK) As such this is the much awaited release of the ‘High Priest of the Harpsichord’ and ‘First Lady of the Recorder’.

Lucy Jeffery

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Going To Pieces

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Recorder Magazine (UK) Mikkleborg`s music is very deeply rooted in his own spiritual life.

Cat Groom

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Going To Pieces

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Music Web International: (UK) Evocative of textures and moods with ceaseless refinement … fundamentally lyrical … a pleasure … a winning disc

Jonathan Woolf

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Going To Pieces

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Klassik Heute 10/10/10 (Germany)..music you want to hear again and again because it is deeply human.

Heinz Braun

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Going To Pieces

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International Record Review IRR (UK) it`s quite extraordinarily effective.

Roger Thomas

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Going To Pieces

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Gramophone: (UK)Concertos from a founder of the ”Nordic jazz sound”.

Richard Whitehouse,

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Going To Pieces

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The Classical Reviewer: (UK)Mikkelborg has created a real fusion of classical, world and jazz, not merely some kind of cross over. If musical boundaries are really to be broken then surely this attractive music shows at least one way to do it.

The Classical Reviewer

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