Norwegian vocalist/composer Grete Skarpeid's Beyond Other Stories is contemporary word painting at its finest, with rhythmic contours beautifully enhanced by a quartet of master musicians, led by Cuban pianist Aruán Ortiz.

Skarpeid draws us into the interior landscape of life with an eerily beautiful sense of freedom in her voice, mixing melancholy and joy, vulnerability and splendor. Ortiz's beautifully crafted arrangements of variety and sensuousness, are captured in every caressed phrase by Skarpeid. The music shines from the ethereal magnificence of "Singing Again," which sets to music a poem by the noted Norwegian poet Olav H. Hauge, through the feelings of spiritual loss evoked in "Adam and Eve," to the existential weightlessness of "Flying High." T

he unlikely musical partnership of Grete and Aruán began by happenstance when Ortiz passed through Grete's remote hometown while touring Norway with Don Byron. Grete shared some of her original songs with Ortiz, who instantly fell in love with her music and encouraged her to write more, later collaborating in New York on Skarpeid's first album, "My Songs" in 2016.

PERSONNEL:

• Grete Skarpeid - voice
• Aruán Ortiz - piano
• Rob Waring - vibes and percussion
• Cameron Brown - bass
• Gerald Cleaver - drums

New York, September 26-29, 2018

TRACKS:

• 01 Singing Again
• 02 Adam & Eve
• 03 Stille Stille Stille
• 04 While the Sun Is Sinking
• 05 Cats in Crete
• 06 Like a Bird
• 07 The Queen Inside This Room
• 08 Holding
• 09 My Favorite Things
• 10 Flying High