Kristin Skaare - Er

New "interactive" solo album with Kristin Skaare

She invites her listeners into a quiet, ambient and melodic room.

Kristin Skaare started her music career by substituting for an inebriated pianist, and has since moved on to playing with innumerable Norwegian and international artists. She allows herself literally to be taken away and inspired by her surroundings – whether these are the sirens of emergency vehicles after the terrible events on 22 July 2011, or a fly that disturbs her while improvising.

Kristin Skaare is now releasing her third solo album. The previous album was entitled "VAR" (WAS). Now comes "ER" (IS), and she is back where she made her debut in 1999: On KKV (Amoraroma)

"ER" is an instrumental record with Kristin Skaare's grand piano in the centre of everything that happens. The production is spacious enough that listeners can bring something of themselves into the music. So many recordings these days are made to “hit you” off the radio. But this production goes in a slightly different direction. It has been mixed by Kai Løland, who has kept the dynamic force while avoiding compression and other techniques used to pack and saturate the audio.

"I have entered a quiet room, listening to what arises in me in the silence," Kristin says about her new project. For more than 20 years she has had regular instruction in meditation techniques, but she does not want to call her music "meditation music". Yet, she does not deny that the music is meditative.

In addition to Kristin and her piano you will also hear Ole Henrik Moe and Kari Rønnekleiv on violins and Erland Dahlen on percussion.

In addition to the bouquet of her own compositions Kristin Skaare has also included some familiar songs, such as "Til Ungdommen" [To Youth] and "Barndomsminne fra Nordland" [Childhood memories from Nordland]. "It’s good to have some pegs to hang things on, something to recognize in amongst the new that is created here and now, and we have had some fun with some clichés, whether they’re from composers of contemporary music, pop music, classical music or jazz," she says.

On the front cover Kristin has presented a little story about each piece. Here is one of them, for the composition called "VÅR FLUES KIRKE" [The Church of Our Fly]:

"This song is inspired by an uncommonly fat, lazy and icky fly. It camped out on my piano keys during the entire recording. If it moved, it would be within a radius of a key or two, always returning to the place it started from. I tried to play it away, without success. A hymn emerges from this friction: "Ingen vinner frem til den evige ro" [None shall win eternal peace]. I believe that the fly totally disagreed with this insight…"