Kjetil Mulelid is a young Norwegian pianist who normally plays in a trio with bass player Bjørn Marius Hegge and drummer Andreas Winther (album reviewed here). Mulelid is a graduate of the renowned jazz course at NTNU in Trondheim and played at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival as part of the collaboration with the jazz course at Birmingham Conservatoire.
On this occasion he plays a solo piano set with 11 tracks. The set was recorded on a beautiful-sounding Bösendorfer piano at Athletic Sound studio in Halden, Norway. The recording is crystal clear and the piano sound is excellent.
In the early tracks, Beginning, Skjong, and Point of View (YouTube below) there is a strong influence from classical music; apparently the pianist in his childhood listened repeatedly to music by Beethoven, Chopin and Debussy, and there are echoes of the music of these composers in these tracks.
Dancers is much more rhythmic and upbeat, while Le Petit builds up to a climax and the improvisation has a nice arc in the way it develops. Later tracks, Love Story, For you I’ll do anything, Sailor’s Song, Blooming and Kanske i morgen strike me as having a more romantic feel.
This is attractive music. One can sit back and allow it to flow over one, but the pianist always has an appealing way of building in a phrase, or maybe two, that can take one to another place and create the element of surprise.
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