Christian Wallumrød’s first solo piano album: this sometimes overly ascetic player over the years has drawn on a big range of genres including jazz, church music, folk, baroque and contemporary music, collaborating widely with among others the group Dans les Arbres and Jan Bang.
A long way from Close Erase days, a short-lived band that demonstrated just what Wallumrød could do with post-Bitches Brew jazz-rock, this new solo studio album appears 40 years on from the anniversary of the recording of the biggest landmark in solo jazz piano The Köln Concert. ‘Lassome’ at the end of Pianokammer definitely recalls Jarrett in some ways, a pianist whose invisible presence lurks in many shadowy places on Pianokammer.
Much preferable to Wallumrød’s 2013 album Outstairs, there’s a lot going on even within this album’s often very skeletal and possibly, to some listeners, forbidding structure. Just six tunes varying in length between just under five minutes and a little under nine Pianokammer is easily digestible bearing everything in mind and hardly the hair shirt experience it could have been. Intense yes and remote sometimes, for instance on ‘Second Fahrkunst’ right in the middle of the album, a combination of recording techniques including natural resonance enhance these feelings. But ultimately on a track such as ‘Boyd 1970’ the opposite sensation is true: a tune full of temperature-rising captivating warmth.
Stephen Graham