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.
Reviews
March 10, 2014
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
January 9, 2014
Recorder Magazine (UK) Mikkleborg`s music is very deeply rooted in his own spiritual life.
Cat Groom
November 9, 2013
Music Web International: (UK) Evocative of textures and moods with ceaseless refinement … fundamentally lyrical … a pleasure … a winning disc
Jonathan Woolf
October 29, 2013
Klassik Heute 10/10/10 (Germany)..music you want to hear again and again because it is deeply human.
Heinz Braun
October 9, 2013
International Record Review IRR (UK) it`s quite extraordinarily effective.
Roger Thomas
September 30, 2013
Gramophone: (UK)Concertos from a founder of the ”Nordic jazz sound”.
Richard Whitehouse,
September 9, 2013
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