Silje Nergaard: Well-crafted pop and jazz

(Molde/Fire Flate/PULS): By any standards, Pat Metheny’s participation in this year’s festival has been extraordinary. Nine concerts in five days, plus a two-hour workshop where the guitarist spoke with both warm, often humorous eloquence and penetrating intelligence, provided ample evidence of this wonderful musician’s seemingly insatiable hunger to play.

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Silje Nergaard, Pat Metheny / /

Av Anonym // 21.07.01

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Following his two blistering sets earlier in the day with the full-on Håkon Kornstad Trio, perhaps Pat felt he deserved a rest. Whatever, Silje Neergard and her trio of Tord Gustavsen (piano), Harald Johnsen (bass) and Jarle Vespestad (drums) had the stage to themselves for the first forty or so minutes of the concert.

A matter to refer to the Trade Descriptions Officer, perhaps, but the full house seemed happy enough.

The sensuous Silje demonstrated her ability to float between the worlds of pop and jazz with well-crafted versions of eg. Sting’s “If You Love Somebody (Set Them Free)” and “Bewitched, Bothered And Bewildered” and her trio interpreted the spare and atmospheric arrangements in some style – although they were not aided by a sound mix which had Vespestad’s bass drum too high in the mix.

Metheny then came on, and several duos with Neergard took the concert into another dimension. A Nordic ballad was outstanding, with Metheny’s multi-stringed Picasso guitar providing the perfect complement to Neergard’s somewhat Monica Zetterlund-like delivery.

Editorial deadlines meant that I had to miss the remainder of the concert, with the trio coming back to join the two principals. However, I’d heard enough to understand why, despite an occasional tendency to a slight harshness of delivery in the upper register, the undeniably charming Silje Neergard is seen by many as this year’s hottest – or should that be coolest? – Nordic prospect for international singing success.

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