Aki Rissanen
Helsinki, Finland
Monday 12 Oct 2009
Festival City
Nils Berg is an inventive and prolific figure in Stockholm’s equivalent of a downtown scene, where many elements of Sweden’s fertile music scene are meshing together. Its a habitat in which groups like The Stoner, the main project of this eclectic saxophonist and composer, have built a reputation for creative and engaging music, documented on four cds in as many years. For 12 Points!, he debuts a brand new project that assembles a quintet of the city finest players, with cellist Johanna Dahl, vibraphonist Mattias Stahl, bassist Josef Kallerdahl and drummer Sebastien Vog. Together they make an empathic sound, equally balanced between rhythm and reflection, and toying with ideas drawn from Sweden’s jazz tradition e but also it lineage in classical, folk and catchy pop music.
