Bugge Wesseltoft

The Norwegian Bugge Wesseltoft is often referred to as a jazz innovator. A perfect musical autodidact, Wesseltoft was able to play the piano at the age of three, but he stubbornly refused any further formal musical education. His only teacher was his father's record collection, which directed him towards jazz. But he was never the only one - as a teenager he played in punk bands, later his iconic Prophet-5 synthesizer can be heard on the records of Norwegian pop bands. In 1990, he released a joint album with Jan Gabarek on ECM Records. Three years later, he takes advantage of the offers of the festival in the town of Voss and assembles his first own band for his composition A Little War Story, which also includes trumpeter Nils Petter Molvaer. Here he also meets the singer Sidsel Endresen, with whom in the following years he released several remarkable albums recorded only as a pair. Two of them received Norway's annual Grammy Award. In 1994, Bugge founds the self-confidently named project New Conception of Jazz, with which he boldly crosses the boundaries of jazz orthodoxy towards current trends in club music. House, techno, ambient, but also noise music or free improvisation, Bugge mixes it all into an explosive energetic cocktail that tastes best on Sharing or Moving records. Under the banner New Conception of Jazz, he released a total of four studio albums as well as one concert album, which captures the triumphant world record from the first half of the decade. After her, New Conception of Jazz splits. In recent years, Bugge mainly performs alone with a piano, collaborating with such names as the French classic of club music Laurent Garnier or guitarist John Scofield. He was also heavily influenced by Indian music and founded the Ragatronics project with several local musicians. In 2016, on the twentieth anniversary of the debut album, Wesseltoft decided to revive the New Conception of Jazz and set out again for adventures in the world of improvisation. This time he invited an all-female quartet of talented Norwegian musicians.