Release Date: 29 April 2016
Label: Jansen Records / Jansen Plater Produksjon
Packaging Type: Slip Sleeve (CD or Vinyl)
No of Units: 10
Barcode: 7041881386718
Genres: Pop Female Vocalist
Description
One grand piano. One voice. It usually doesn't take more to send shivers down your spine. At least when the artist is called Hanne Kolstø and has a songbook that surpasses many others'. The extremely prolific singer-songwriter and producer from Sykkylven has in five years released five albums with her innovative pop music. Now she's gathering some of her compositions and releasing the closest you'll get to a "Best of Hanne Kolstø" album. In acoustic versions from the altar at the Tøyen church in Oslo.
In April 2014 Hanne was asked by Henie Onstad Art Centre to hold a different kind of concert. Her answer was to ask piano player Andreas Stensland Løwe to join her in interpreting and arranging some songs from her rich catalogue. The duo cuts the songs down to a minimum and lets the melodies and lyrics step forward. The result is striking. The concert ends in tears and resonant applause from an audience that has been moved. Last summer she repeated this success in the Emanuel Vigeland Museum's atrium during the Piknik i Parken festival.
- It was fascinating to see what happened when I let the melodies and lyrics get more space, and Andreas' arrangements let me be much more at liberty to improvise, something Andreas and I were doing a lot several years back, Hanne Kolstø says.
Kolstø and Stensland Løwe have previously played together in both Post and Elope, the latter a band who were doing free improvisation pop music. The duo's distinctive musical chemistry stems from here. Stensland Løwe has a master's degree in music performance from the Kristiansand Conservatory of Music, and is also known for having played with artists like Susanna Wallumrød and Frida Ånnevik, plus his own band Splashgirl.
Hanne Kolstø has released music under her own name since 2011, and has in a short time managed to establish herself as one of the most original and exciting artists at the Norwegian music scene. She's been nominated to the Spellemannprisen award three times, and during the last few years she's toured in Europe and the US. Her fifth and so far latest album, While We Still Have Light, was released in November 2015 and received rave reviews. "Kolstø is not following a hit formula, only her heart," wrote Vårt Land about the album. A truth that applies to the whole of Hanne Kolstø's career.
Live at Tøyenkirken was recorded and mixed by Øyvind Røsrud Gundersen during the autumn 2015 and will be released by Jansen Plateproduksjon on 22 April.
Tracklisting
Malin Pettersen
Darling West
Silver Lining
Ole Kirkeng
Torgeir Waldemar
Casiokids
Embla and the Karidotters
The Northern Belle
Hanne Kolstø
Hanne Kolsto
