Part 1
Name: Jan Bang
Occupation: Musician, composer, producer
Nationality: Norwegian
Current release: For the new project punkt | stillefelt, Jan Bang teams up with his long-time creative partner Erik Honoré as well as British trio Stillefelt and students from the University of Agder. A first single, "pastoral", is out via Jazzland Recordings, with full-length Modest Utopias to follow later in the year. More about this unique release as well as Jan Bang's new solo album can be found in the following interview.
Recommendations: Joseph Campell: The Power of Myth; Music: Ravel: Ma Mère L´oye
If you enjoyed this Jan Bang interview and would like to know more about his music and current tour dates, visit his official website.
Over the course of his career, Jan Bang has collaborated with a wide range of artists, including Eivind Aarset, Trilok Gurtu, Bugge Wesseltoft, Nils Petter Molvaer, Roberto Di Gioia, MELT Trio, Dai Fujikura, Ståle Storløkken, and Samuel Rohrer.
[Read our Eivind Aarset interview]
[Read our Nils Petter Molvaer interview]
[Read our MELT Trio interview]
[Read our Dai Fujikura interview]
[Read our Ståle Storløkken interview]
[Read our Samuel Rohrer interview]
[Read our Bugge Wesseltoft interview]
[Read our Bugge Wesseltoft interview about improvisation]
When did you start writing/producing/playing music and what or who were your early passions and influences? What was it about music and/or sound that drew you to it?
I've always been playing for as long as I remember. First the violin, then the piano and onwards from there as a singer and composer.
I grew up in a family where music always had a great part in our daily lives and was surrounded by records, mostly classical recordings. My brother introduced me to what was around of 70s popular music. I was especially keen on black American music with beautiful harmonies and rhythms.
Memories from singing harmonies to what was mostly Black music in the back seat of our red Renault 12 is still a strong image of my early musical memory. We were three siblings growing up with our mother, a single parent.
When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening and how does it influence your approach to creativity?
I'm not quite sure. I guess this changes and has changed a great deal from childhood through adolescence to becoming an adult.
As I'm writing to you I am listening to Midori Takada playing mallets. Since that being a physical instrument, I can relate to the human behind the mallets performing. When making my own music - even in my teens – music always started as a feeling. I still work this way: trusting my intuition in the moment. This is in a way my own contradiction as a performer.
When working on stage I am trying to just be precise, to be as accurate as possible and not forcing my own emotions over to members of the audience. I am working with different components like texture, harmonics, melodies, rhythm, pulses. Parallel activities, all the time at once trying to be as accurate and in the moment as possible. To be able to react naturally to an impulse.
A great deal of my work has been devoted to live activities improvising with electronics as well as using pre-composed material.
How would you describe your development as an artist in terms of interests and challenges, searching for a personal voice, as well as breakthroughs?
The world of music has always been an interesting place for me. Very early on I developed my own way of composing at the piano. I had a piano teacher that I persuaded to only write down my own small pieces instead of learning other people’s music which never caught my attention.
He said: “but Jan, you are not learning anything from me writing down your music”. He was obviously right, but something in there was in retrospect a good decision for myself and my own learning experience. I could dive into my own little bubble and further develop in a natural way. Self-taught in this respect.
Starting out as a duo with Erik Honoré in my teens, my goal was to become a producer. I wanted to learn how to fully express myself in a studio becoming involved in the early electronic music production in Oslo. I was drawn towards jazz musicians. Great players that could improvise together like gods. Some of these musicians already had made a name for themselves. I was interested in connecting the brilliance of these musicians’ performances with studio techniques.
By chance I found a way to bring these ideas onto stage. I started real time sampling of the musicians, improvising with these samples exploring new possibilities with a group of interesting people. Singer Sidsel Endresen was essential to these explorations. Bugge Wesseltoft was also essential and eventually a large number of experimental musicians from the Norwegian scene at that moment including the likes of Arve Henriksen, Eivind Aarset, Audun Kleive and others.
I decided to move back to Kristiansand to live my life with Nina Birkeland, the graphic designer who is responsible for the Punkt artwork. By 2005 I returned to my old friend Erik Honoré and together we founded PUNKT. This became a new chapter in my life and brought new ways of working for us both.
Punkt is a festival where concerts are immediately being followed by a remix of what just happened. Over the years we have brought PUNKT to 27 cities around the world and still counting. Over the years, so many artists have been involved and been taking part in this adventure. To name them would be an unending list of talented people.
A few selected interviews with previous Punkt artists:
[Read our J. Peter Schwalm interview]
[Read our Nik Bärtsch interview]
[Read our Brian Eno interview]
[Read our Marconi Union interview]
[Read our John Tilbury interview]
[Read our Kresten Osgood interview]
[Read our Marilyn Mazur interview]
[Read our David Toop interview]
Parallel to Punkt activities, production work for others and my involvement with my students at the University of Agder – I find time to work on my own projects.
When the disease came, I was working on the second Dark Star Safari album, an experimental band where I'm the singer.
I never had any plans of returning to using my voice, but suddenly the material opened up that possibility – or rather the melodies just came in a natural way. I decided to record my voice singing these songs and getting to know my voice again and the different voices it contained in different register, nuances in dynamics etc.
Tell me a bit about your sense of identity and how it influences both your preferences as a listener and your creativity as an artist, please.
We are all mixed from various cultural influences, so identity to me is not singular. I can enter different situations and usually I will find interesting ways of approaching the material.
I am interested in the human spirit and in the singular human being. Showing love and respect to the people around me is something I highly value. As a musician I had to develop my own way of playing using the sampler as an improvising and compositional tool.
What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and art?
I have always had a sense for playfulness and a strong instinct in music making. As a young person I would be absorbing visual art, films, and was obsessed with music. Each day after school I would be running home to the piano to explore new colours, harmonic structures, and melody.
While techniques and instruments have changed, I still have much of the same approach to music making. A strong sense of composing or recording when inspiration comes.
How would you describe your views on topics like originality and innovation versus perfection and timelessness in music? Are you interested in a “music of the future” or “continuing a tradition”?
The past belongs to the future so in that respect I am aware of that I'm standing on other people´s shoulders.
To place oneself in a tradition is not a bad thing. It's essential in understanding the time we live in.
