Sinikka Langeland – Wind and Sun (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Sinikka Langeland – Wind and Sun (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:05:41 minutes | 1,26 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM

Many years into her study of the music of Finnskogen, an area of Norway once populated by Forest Finns, where she now resides, Sinikka Langeland returns with another strong chapter in her journey. Langeland’s instrument, the charming Norwegian harp-like kantele, exists in several iterations from five and 15 strings up to 40, and is played on a table like the more familiar zither. An ECM recording artist since 2007, she has recorded in a number of contexts including solo, instrumental-only and vocal-centric. She teams with an all-star group of Norwegian musicians, including trumpeter Mathias Eick, bassist Mats Eilertsen and drummer Thomas Strønen, all of whom have recorded for ECM as leaders. Recorded by engineer Martin Abrahamsen at Rainbow Studios in Oslo, these sessions were mixed by Langeland, Guido Gorna and Michael Hinreiner at Bavaria Musikstudios in Munich. In line with the ECM ethos, the breadth and depth of the sound of Wind and Sun are breathtaking, accurately capturing the delicate resonances of the kantele. For lyrics for her original music, Langeland refashions texts from a variety of sources old and new—ancient myths and legends to modern poetry. Here she has collaborated with contemporary Norwegian poet and novelist Jon Fosse. His poem on the unstoppable passing of time, “It Walks and Walks,” is gorgeously sung by Langeland while the horns provide complimentary accompaniment joining together at the end. In “When the Heart is a Moon,” a pair of poems are joined and despite losing something in their English translation in the liner notes, some of Fosse’s artfulness comes through: “I shall see it disappear/ And hear music/ In the movement we create/ And that creates us, so distinctly/ In the darkness.” In many ways what grounds Langeland and her music in the modern world is her jazz-like approach to arranging and band dynamics. “The Love” spectacularly succeeds in adopting some of the sway of Brazilian bossa nova music, complete with a swarthy Stan Getz-like saxophone from a longtime Langeland collaborator, Trygve Seim. Another striking track is “A Child Who Exists,” with just a trio of voice, kantele and saxophone whose interplay exudes a fragile, haunting beauty. Enchanting musicological esoterica. – Robert Baird

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Sinikka Langeland – Wind and Sun (2023) [24Bit-96kHz] FLAC [PMEDIA] ⭐️

Sinikka Langeland - Wind and Sun (2023) [24Bit-96kHz] FLAC [PMEDIA] ⭐️ Download

Sinikka Langeland – Wind and Sun (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:05:41 minutes | 1,26 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | ©

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Sinikka Langeland – Wolf Rune (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Sinikka Langeland - Wolf Rune (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Sinikka Langeland – Wolf Rune (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 42:09 minutes | 742 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM

Wolf Rune, a solo album, casts a new light on the highly personal idiom of Sinikka Langeland, kantele player and folk singer from Finnskogen, Norway’s “Finnish forest”. Sinikka integrates her own songs among folk hymns, shamanistic rune songs and traditional dance pieces, draws texts from multiple poetic sources, and expands the expressive range of her instruments. Few artists embody the spirit of place as comprehensively as Langeland, and her music ruminates upon the wildness of the natural world and the interrelationships of its inhabitants. Wolf Rune, recorded in December 2019 in Oslo’s Rainbow Studio, is an absorbing addition to Sinikka’s ECM discography, which has featured critically acclaimed projects including Starflowers, The Land That Is Not, Maria’s Song, The Half-Finished Heaven and The Magical Forest.
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Sinikka Langeland – The Half-Finished Heaven (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Sinikka Langeland - The Half-Finished Heaven (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Sinikka Langeland – The Half-Finished Heaven (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 49:22 minutes | 969 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © ECM

The Half-Finished Heaven is the fourth ECM album from Sinikka Langeland, the kantele player, singer and composer from Finnskogen, south-eastern Norway’s “Forest of the Finns”. The music she has written for the ensemble here touches on, as she says, her “whole scale of expression”. Sinikka’s highly original and self-contained oeuvre is informed, in changing degree, by folk traditions of Norway and Finland, as well as classical and contemporary music and improvisation from jazz and other sources. Each of her gifted bandmates brings his own range of colours to the music.

This time around the ratio of vocal to instrumental music has been adjusted: after Sinikka’s first ECM recording (Starflowers in 2006), producer Manfred Eicher proposed a solo kantele album, “with three songs and the remainder instrumental”. The idea had to settle for a while, but proportions have remained, even as Sinikka’s writing for the project has expanded to embrace viola and percussion – and saxophone on some pieces – as well as her own kanteles (table harps).
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Sinikka Langeland – Maria Magdalena (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Sinikka Langeland - Maria Magdalena (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Sinikka Langeland – Maria Magdalena (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:11:05 minutes | 1,14 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Lawo Classics

The story of Mary Magdalene has been a source of comfort for many women, and research has shown that medieval ballads about Mary Magdalene are often sung by single mothers. Young women who were outcasts must have found some measure of consolation in the songs about Mary, who bore children with her father, her brother and a priest, but was cleansed of sin after doing penance in the wilderness for many years. But the possibility should not be overlooked that the songs could have been sung with a sarcastic undertone, becoming an unassailable and liberating weapon when there was no other recourse for rebelling against unjust treatment.
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Sinikka Langeland – The Magical Forest (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Sinikka Langeland - The Magical Forest (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Sinikka Langeland – The Magical Forest (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 47:36 minutes | 970 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © ECM

The colours of The Magical Forest glow in this remarkable recording which brings together Sinikka Langeland’s Norwegian-Finnish-Swedish Starflowers quintet with the singers of the Trio Mediӕval. It’s an inspired concept: the Trio Mediӕval, with their affinity for folk music and their unique vocal blend, adapt themselves ideally to Sinikka’s sound-world, which is once archaic, timeless and contemporary. The quintet members, all bandleaders in their own right, are amongst the most characterful players in Scandinavia today, and Sinikka sets them free to improvise around her cycle of songs, built upon myths and legends of the world tree.
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