Houses

Description

The Norwegian jazz singer and composer Silje Nergaard presents her superb new album Houses. Houses is a collection of songs about interpersonal relationships during the particular period the world has gone through in recent years. In each song, Silje Nergaard describes the unusual challenges her friends, neighbors, and family faced during the Covid-19 pandemic, at home, in their house. In her songs, the artist portrays their hopes and dreams, memories of once-loved people, and feelings such as loneliness and nostalgia, all with great empathy. She recounts: “I started to clear my head during daily walks in my neighborhood during the long days spent confined in my own house. During these walks, it became clear to me that other people were also locked behind their own walls. After a while, I began to imagine the kind of stories that were unfolding behind those walls. These stories transformed into songs and gave birth to the concept of my new album ‘Houses.’ Each song is a story about people's lives in their ‘home.’” On Houses, Silje Nergaard has gathered some of the best jazz musicians from Europe and the world! Helge Lien (piano), Bugge Wesseltoft (keyboards), and Håkon Kornstad (saxophone) are all part of her session band. Among the special guests are American jazz singer Kurt Elling and violinist Adam Baldych. Grammy winner Vince Mendoza, among others, created the string arrangements that the Norwegian Broad Orchestra and the Budapest Art Orchestra recorded. Mendoza and Silje Nergaard have previously collaborated on the arrangement of the song “A Thousand True Stories,” which earned Vince Mendoza a Grammy Award in 2011.