The legendary jazz violin player Michal Urbaniak with jazz students from NTNU.

Photo: Thor Nielsen/NTNU Info

The Jazz Programme’s graduation lists read like a Who’s Who of Norwegian jazz musicians, such as piano player Tord Gustavsen, bassist Harald Johnsen and drummer Jarle Vespestad, who play together as the Tord Gustavsen Trio. The New York Times described the Trio’s work as melting "off the bandstand into puddles of feeling". Their latest album, ‘The Ground’ topped the Norwegian national sales charts, the VG lista top 40, which is more traditionally dominated by pop music. All three musicians have studied at NTNU’s Jazz Programme, as have the groups Supersilent and Urban Connection, and Ola Kvernberg, a jazz violinist.

SEE WELL KNOWN-GRADUATES

Kristoffer Lo, a 21-year-old native of Oslo who plays the tuba and the guitar, is in his second year at the NTNU programme. He came to Trondheim because of its strong reputation throughout Europe. He is also a fan of Kjetil Møster, the Bergen saxophonist and 2006 winner of the IJFO award who also graduated from the programme. “He’s a great inspiration,” Lo said of Møster. “Everyone here is. All the teachers here are people I like to listen to.”

Mathias Eick was in January 2007 awarded the prestigious International Jazz Award for New Talent.

Photo: Hans Christian Tho

Norway’s first jazz programme
The NTNU Jazz Programme was established in 1979 and is the oldest in Norway. Carl Haakon Waadeland, an associate professor and head of the jazz section, said the programme came about because Trondheim was a magnet for jazz musicians – and because the Trondheim Music Conservatory was open to the idea of adding jazz education to its musical mix. That spirit of cooperation remains today, where the city’s chamber orchestra and the jazz orchestra play together. In fact, Trondheim is the only city in Norway with its own jazz orchestra, which has collaborated with jazz greats such as Chick Corea, Pat Metheny and Joshua Redman, and played in numerous jazz festivals in the US, Japan and Norway. More recently, jazz studies have been added at the universities in Bergen and Oslo, but Trondheim’s long tradition makes it an attractive environment for students. Another strength is the programme’s strong reliance on performance as a way of learning. “It’s very musician-oriented – it’s not academic. We encourage people to play all the time,” said Erling Aksdal, a jazz pianist and assistant professor in the programme. “It all started with musicians being hired to teach. That made it practical, and the teachers were very enthusiastic.”

Øyvind Brandtsegg playing the vibrapfone

Photo: Kim Nygård/NTNU SA

International cooperation and a new performance space
Erling Aksdal is working on developing a master’s programme that would enable students to spend time at other great music schools in Europe, and eventually in North America. He has spoken to schools in Berlin and Copenhagen, and is exploring the possibility of building some kind of exchange programme with McGill University in Montreal, and the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston.Another exciting development for jazz musicians in Trondheim was the opening of Dokkhuset in September 2006. The building is a performance space in the city centre that is rented by the university in a cooperative approach to showcase both university artists and others. The Mid-Norway Jazz Centre, the Trondheim Jazz Forum, the TrondheimSoloists and the Trondheim Chamber Music Festival are also housed in the building and are partners in the programming. Dokkhuset’s opening performance was a part of the Trondheim Chamber Music Festival, which featured the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra in addition to more traditional classical music performers.“Contemporary classical music and jazz have a lot in common, both can be very defiant of traditions,” Aksdal said. In performing together, “we try to erase the borders between classical and jazz, and I think both benefit.”

Building contacts, finding your voice
Trondheim’s prominence as Norway’s first jazz programme has always attracted top students. “People don’t become jazz musicians for a career, they become jazz musicians because they are fanatics,” states Aksdal. “They’re motivated. I think that is why people come there – they get to meet their peers.”Aksdal said that is because so many students go on to successful professional careers, working with student peers often leads to long-lasting musical relationships and later collaboration. That is what Kristoffer Lo feels. He is already playing with 6 or 7 groups formed from students he has met in the scant 18 months he has been at NTNU. “It’s cool,” he said.