Håkon Kornstad Trio: For You Alone

A new outing from the critically acclaimed Kornstad Trio—just in time for an anticipated re-opening of the global music scene. Maybe this album could open your ears, too?

Kornstad Trio started performing together in 2016. Jazz saxophonist and opera singer Håkon Kornstad is joined by accordionist Frode Haltli and bass player Mats Eilertsen — two of the finest and most versatile improvisers on the European music scene today.

Following the 2018 release Im Treibhaus — ‘For You Alone’ is a new set of songs and opera arias paired with soulful jazz.

HOW DID YOU CURATE THE MUSICAL SELECTION?
It all started when the Oslo main library—Deichman moved to a new building next to the Oslo Opera House in February 2020. Surplus books, vinyl, CDs, and all sorts of paraphernalia were put on sale, and people were standing in line for hours outside the old library to buy some of it. (Strange that they hadn’t been equally interested when all of it was free for them to borrow, but that’s another story …) Anyway, I happened to stand in that line, and once the doors opened I rushed up the stairs to the second floor to have a look in the music department. So did many other people, and I found myself squeezed between two connoisseurs who were filling crates with old jazz vinyl without even looking at it. So I capitulated and found a deserted corner. It turned out to be the musical scores section. One shelf was filled with songs for voice and piano, and I flicked through them to see if anything interesting was still left. They were 5 Norwegian kroner a piece. And so it happened I found the whole programme for this album. I had heard almost all of the songs before, and some of them I had even played and sung earlier. But choosing songs for this trio can be a bit tricky, because we’re quite omnivorous. So this arbitrary form of curating a music programme suits me: almost all the songs we ended up with on this album were on the shelf that day at Deichman.

HOW DID YOU FIND THE COVER PICTURE?
I flick through oslobilder.no every now and then. A great source of Oslo history, made by Oslo City Museum. One day my mom and I were talking about the street where she grew up, and I searched for it on that website, and we found some pictures from the 1950s. Amongst them there was an interior picture from what looked like a birthday party. Ten-year-old boys sitting round a table drinking Coca-Cola. And at the end of the table a little girl — it was her! Anyway, to answer the question: The venue on the cover is Dovrehallen, nowadays a rather run down bierstube in Storgata, Oslo — it has a lot of history in its walls. The photo is from a new year’s party in 1930, and was taken by Thorleif Wardenær, a prominent portrayer of theatrical life in Oslo (then called Kristiania). Almost exactly 90 years later, the liner photo was taken by Signe Luksengard at another of the old Oslo theatres: Victoria Teater — now home to Nasjonal Jazzscene. It captures us doing a sound check for one of the many streaming concerts that happened around that time, during the COVID pandemic shut down. Let’s hope we can soon draw audiences like on the cover again … Enjoy!