Gunhild Seim's music has been commissioned by jazz societies like Vossajazz and Stavanger Jazzforum.
As a performer she has worked under the leadership of great musicians and composers like Alex Von Schlippenbach, Evan Parker, Keith Tippett, Nils Henrik Asheim and many others.With her longest-working band Gunhild Seim and Time Jungle she has been touring Norway, Sweden, Britain and Germany.
Recently she was invited, as member of the Kitchen Orchestra, to do a 5-day residency at the Superdeluxe in Tokyo, a center for experimental music, performance and art.
She has received grants like Statens arbeidsstipend and Sparebanken Vests Kunstnerstipend. She has given interviews to national broadcasting agencies in Norway and Germany, as well as magazines like Ballade and Jazzpodium, and her music has been aired by radio stations in different countries such as USA, England, Portugal, France, Germany and Colombia.
Seim has been characterized as an abundant source of ideas, with her irreverent music, whose preferences and references know no boundaries. As part of the large improv ensemble Kitchen Orchestra, and with her own quartet Gunhild Seim & Time Jungle, she has created hybrids of popular music and creative music, of the known and the unknown. Her music is best described using contradictions and polarities.
Gunhild Seim about her music:
I knew from an early age that I wanted to be a composer. As for playing the trumpet, you could say, the trumpet chose me. I got one from the local schoolband when I was 10, I loved it and I stuck with it from instinct rather than making a conscious choice. A few years later I started to discover great musicians, like Miles Davis who was an early influence, and many others on different instruments. I always saw "the trumpet" or "jazz" as a tool or an experiment more than a means to an end, and I always listened to all kinds of music. I love that feeling when improvising, a sort of meditative state, being in the moment, the feeling that the music could go anywhere. The concept of collective consciousness and collective intelligence interests me a lot. In my compositions, I try to combine what's known and what's unknown to the listener. I have no limits to my own musical preferences only that I'd like the music to speak and breathe and to resonate and communicate with the listener, it could demand attention or it could be almost invisible, music that is elastic, malleable, contradicting, transformative.
Self descriptions of the musicians involved in the TIME JUNGLE project:
Arild Hoem, alto sax
I started my musical career in school bands and big bands, followed by musical studies in High School and later on a bachelor degree in jazz at the university in Stavanger, Norway. Early on, I was fascinated and inspired by improvised music in the melodic style of Norwegian musicians like Jan Garbarek and Nils Petter Molvaer. After moving to Stavanger I worked on finding own sound inspired by jazz standards, avant garde and contemporary music. My goal as an improviser is to find strong melodies, regardless of musical boundaries.
John Lilja, double bass
I was drawn to improvised music even before I was drawn to jazz. As a young electric bass player, I was introduced to the Grateful Dead by a friend, via live concert recordings that captured the band's spontaneous arrangements and free-form improvisations. When I started listening to jazz and switched to the double bass, my tastes gravitated towards Ornette Coleman, Miles Davis and John Coltrane; later, John Zorn and Sun Ra. Structureless structure. As a student I studied composition, which I believe was beneficial to my method of improvisation. I try to create something new within the loose boundaries of already-existing structures by listening to what is happening around me and reacting to it. The double bass has traditionally had a role in the background, supporting the soloist and holding the time down; even though our music doesn't adhere to the strict rules of bebop, allowing each of us more freedom, I still feel that my main responsibility is to support my bandmates, and hopefully make them sound better.
Dag Magnus Narvesen, drums
I started playing when I was a kid, and music resounded in me at a very early age. I attended a high school of music; when I heard Albert Ayler, John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman for the first time at the age of sixteen, there was no question in my mind about where I belonged musically. The impact of their music gave me an insight and a way into jazz music, and their aesthetics have been following my musical journey vividly ever since. Soon after, I discovered the European improv scene with Peter Brötzmann, Alexander von Schlippenbach, Evan Parker and many others, and the spontaneous way of making music together with other musicians through active listening and musical determination made a huge impact on me. I would argue that it created the foundation of my own aestethics. That, together with a focus on creating my own spontaneous rules and boundaries, in spontaneously composed music while preserving playfulness towards the music and my co-musicians both on and off stage, has become my very foundation of creating creative music. I think musical boundaries are a source of inspiration from which the only true freedom of music can emerge. Im Time Jungle, I think this gets really interesting. Bringing this playfulness and the aesthetics of spontaneous composition into a world were there are strong references to jazz and chamber music, and also even more rules due to the arrangements, is a great challenge which requires awareness and a strong presence in the very moment. I consider it a privilege to be able to bring my sounds and thoughts into that particular universe.
Quotes about Marilyn Crispell, piano:
"Hearing Marilyn Crispell play solo piano is like monitoring an active volcano. She is one of a very few pianists who rise to the challenge of free jazz."--Jon Pareles, New York Times
"Her improvisational approach is so personal, so explosive and so devastating that it makes jazz (and most other music) sound like the archaic language of an ancient people. There's also a gentle side that makes even simple melodies seem radiantly beautiful."--Larry Kelp, San Francisco Express
"seeing and hearing Crispell play live is a stunning experience…a passionate motivation that approaches shamanistic spirituality."
"labyrinthine structures held together by a deeply personal logic"
"one of the most technically brilliant, imaginative and impassioned contemporary musicians now expanding the expressive potential of the piano."--Derek Richardson, The East Bay Express (CA)
