The Norwegian Bagpipe (?) Vol II

Norwegian bagpipes? Trust me or, rather, trust Tellef Kvifte. He's one of Norwegian music's treasures: as professor of musicology researching countless areas of Norway's traditional music, as a multi-instrumentalist – from crumhorns to keyboards, and bagpipes – influencing generations of musicians in a career spanning over 50 years. He brings music alive with his ear for musical adventure and his charismatic approach to what he does, his boundless enthusiasm not confined to tradition but delving into jazz, noise, in fact wherever new collaborations beckon.

Norway isn't known for its bagpipe tradition, but it was through a collaboration with British musician Mike Adcock that Tellef Kvifte, in the 1990s, brought some of Norway's vast archive of Hardanger fiddle music to the bagpipe, in this case an instrument built by Alban Faust which he called the Nordic uilleann pipe. Its tone is so sweet that the melodies sing exquisitely above a drone which sounds like the gentle hum of summer bees. Uninterrupted by having to take a breath, the tunes that Kvifte plays on the bagpipe are mesmerising, from dance tunes to long-remembered airs. From Eva Sæther's gorgeous polska (‘Polska av Eva Sæther’) to the haunting ‘Kolbrennevisa’, Tellef Kvifte has us asking, why wouldn't you fall in love with the Norwegian bagpipe?