geir lysne ensemble "the grieg code" live at NDR Hamburg 2009

Morten Halle (sax, fl) Tore Brunborg (sax, fl) Geir Lysne (arr, sax, fl) Steffen Schorn (bs, cl, fl), Eckhard Baur (tp, flh, voc) Jesper Riis (tp, flh, lyrics) Arkady Shilkloper (french horn, flh) Helge Sunde (tb) Lars A. Haug (tu) Vladyslav Sendecki (kb, electronics) Bjørn Kjellemyr (b) Andreas Bye (dr) Terje Isungset (perc, mouth harp, voice)

recorded live at Studio Rolf Liebermann, NDR, Hamburg Germany, April 16, 2009

1. Transad Nias
2. Vebburedong
3. Glossi Vangse
4. Dose Das

The Edvard Grieg Society commissioned Lysne to write The Grieg Code for their congress in Grieg’s birthplace, Bergen, Norway. Lysne had already paid homage on Boahjenásti with his composition “GeirG” (Grieg spelled backwards, the first four letters being Lysne’s first name). The piece is a re-fashioning of the theme from the movement “The Death Of Ase” in Grieg’s “Peer Gynt” Suite No. 1.

Lysne emphasizes that the pieces in The Grieg Code are not jazz versions of Grieg’s compositions. He employs set piano, string, and vocal pieces from Grieg within his own compositions, but he re-works them to the point that they are unrecognisable. Lysne transforms a soprano canto line into a cool bass line, and a violin phrase becomes a drum groove. Lysne calls this procedure "musical anagrams". An anagram is normally a type of word play, the result of rearranging the letters of a word or phrase to produce a new word or phrase (Listen = Silent).
The studio album with this program was released on ACT: