A Scandinavian quartet — reflective, unhurried, alert.
The Scandinavian project Arcanum brings together four artists all well-known to followers of music at ECM: Arve Henriksen, Trygve Seim, Anders Jormin and Markku Ounaskari. They've played together in many permutations over the years, but this is their first album as a quartet.
What reaches the listener first is the thoughtful, reflective quality of the improvising and the sensitivity of the interaction — whether the four are playing music composed in real time or taking a written theme to new places.
On the quartet's debut album, recorded at The Village Recording in Copenhagen in March 2023 and produced by Manfred Eicher, sixteen concise pieces move between composition and improvisation, tradition and modernity, Nordic melancholy and a quieter, almost Far Eastern stillness. The playing is remarkably economical: nothing is overstated, nothing is given away.
Trumpet, saxophones, double bass and percussion draw on decades of shared language to build, in real time, music that is at once airy and form‑conscious, fragile and fulminant, free and coherent. The conversation continues live on stages across Europe.
Arcanum
Recorded March 2023 at The Village Recording, Copenhagen. Engineered by Thomas Vang. Mixed by Manfred Eicher and Michael Hinreiner at Bavaria Studios, Munich.
Sixteen pieces — written, traditional, improvised — by a quartet meeting on album for the first time.
On Arcanum.
Here are four leading players at the height of their powers … conversations of great beauty and originality. This is the one that sounds to me like a future classic.Richard Williams · The Blue Moment
Five stars. The music moves easily and naturally between reflective abstraction and free jazz scampering.BBC — ★★★★★
Weightless beauty from a Scandinavian jazz quartet — fully achieving the Nordic ideal of transparent, timeless beauty.Richard Williams — The Blue Moment
A 55-minute release of lyrical rumination and exquisite group interplay. All the musicians are in splendid form.Michael Tucker — Jazz Journal
When Trygve Seim's wonderful "Trofast" hits me right in the heart, the tears flow.Tor Hammerø — torhammero.blogg.no
The quartet moves easily and gracefully from stealthy to savage, moody to monstrous, silver to gold.Michael Toland — Big Takeover
A triumph of focused interplay, and a brilliantly inventive foray into what remains my favourite period in ECM's long history.Frank Graham — UK Jazz News
As fresh and full of promise as a spring morning, Arcanum sweeps across the smoothly explorative spectrum in a reflective mood.Filipe Freitas — Jazz Trail
A wilful and sometimes playful interaction that brings forth a cornucopia of dramatic, tender and lyrical moments. A wonderful debut.Nick Lea — Jazz Views
In a subtle balance between melancholic mood and joyful excitement.Gerd Filtgen — Stereo
The sympathetic interplay between the four musicians is remarkable; their album grows with each hearing, and I imagine it will continue to do so.Geoff Andrew — geoffandrew.com
Long live free playing and coherent form and spontaneous ideas, outliers, the communication, shared pulse, rough and well‑formed intonation.Werner Stiefele — Rondo
Once under the spell of these outrageously concentrated, airy, fragile, fulminant vignettes, it's easy to get lost in amazement.Michael Engelbrecht — JazzFacts · Klanghorizonte
An all‑star quartet of experienced instrumentalists at home in both composed and free music. Ounaskari on drums and Jormin on bass feel each other very carefully, almost meditatively, from bar to bar.Sebastian Meißner — soundsandbooks.com
Taking memories of Ornette Coleman's quartet as a starting point from which to develop conversations of great beauty and originality.Richard Williams — The Blue Moment
Concerts.
Upcoming — 2026
Past concerts
