Rosensfole [Original recording reissued, Import]

Agnes Buen Garnas, Jan Garbarek | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (August 1, 2000)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Original recording reissued, Import
• Label: ECM
• ASIN: B000025ZO1
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #285,249 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful, strange mix of jazz & medieval Lapp folksongs!, March 10, 1999

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Rosensfole (Audio CD)

Jan Garbarek has long been everybody's favorite Norwegian jazz alto saxophonist (there are so many to choose from!). Here he teams up with a fabulous soprano vocalist, Agnes Buen Garnas, for one of the strangest, most hauntingly beautiful albums I have ever heard. If you've seen the movie "The Navigator," you can imagine the mood--eerie, alien, cold, yet very warm, human, and profound at the same time. If you're a Garbarek fan looking for more jazz, this isn't it. If you're a lover of fantastic music looking for something that will turn your brain inside out in a most delightful way, give Rosensfole a try.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars JAN GARBAREK STRETCHES OUT AT HOME..., June 16, 2001

By 

Larry L. Looney (Austin, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rosensfole (Audio CD)

Having been a fan of Jan Garbarek's work since the early 1970's, I've seen/heard him go through many stanges of compositional expression. This album is one of my all-time favorites -- not just of his work, but of my entire collection. For this cd, Jan not only returns to his Norwegian roots -- he goes back hundreds of years, drawing upon the medieval songs of his homeland for his inspiration.

Playing all of the instruments himself, and joined by the incredible vocalist Agnes Buen Garnas, Garbarek takes the listener through territory seldom explored outside of Norway. There are many fine groups of Scandinavian musicians working today, and many of them are enjoying a well-deserved vogue of popularity -- Varttina, Hedningarna, Gjallarhorn, Mairi Boine Persen, Garmarna, Vasen...&c -- but the mood, time and place evoked by these pieces sets them completely apart from any of the fine work by these artists.

Jan's usually-heard saxophone is here, but it is awash in a mind-boggling (but ever-tasteful) ocean of keyboards, stringed instruments and percussives. Combined with Agnes' voice, the full effect is to sweep the listener away in both time and place. The modern instruments do not, as in some works by others, negate or grate against the soul of these ancient songs -- in the hands of Jan Garbarek, tempered by his deep love of this music, they enhance, embrace and honor it.

If you're appreciative of exploratory but infinitely listenable works, you owe it to yourself to give this some serious attention. The roots themes touched upon in some of Garbarek's other releases -- I TOOK UP THE RUNES, TWELVE MOONS (on which Agnes Buen Garnas also appears) -- are in full bloom here, making this cd a listening experience like no other, and one that will not soon be forgotten.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars atypical but outstanding garbarek, October 25, 2000

By 

C. H Smith (Bowling Green, Kentucky United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rosensfole (Audio CD)

Garbarek is quite possibly Europe's most celebrated saxophonist at this point (not just Norway's, or just on the alto, as the other reviewer implies, tongue in cheek), and he has made this reputation partly by maintaining a recognizably individual, biting style, and partly by involving himself with all manner of kinds of music: contemporary jazz, ethnic/international music, folk music, and medieval and Renaissance classical. Here he provides the backing for a celebrated traditional singer, Agnes Buen Garnas, on early Norwegian music, and the effect is both beautiful and mesmerizing. Garbarek is mostly content to stand in the background, providing techno-atmospherics for Garnas' striking vocalizing. A note, moreover: in this work Garbarek himself plays hardly any music recognizable as coming from a saxophone, so be forewarned! Generous length.