“Being in a room with Sinikka Langeland is like being charmed into a northern forest under a night sky,” wrote Fiona Talkington in Songlines. “Her presence and her voice are magical, but when she plays her kantele you can almost feel nature itself quivering with joy.”

The expressive arc of Sinikka’s music extends from the archaic to the experimental. Rooted in folk forms but wide-open in its perspectives it demands – and on Wind and Sun gets – particularly resourceful interpreters. Langeland’s new group is an optimum assembly of Norwegian musicians, each of them an ECM bandleader in his own right, all of them contributing ideas to the ongoing musical conversation – and, as Sinikka says, “taking things further in their incredible improvised solos.” For her song texts this time, Sinikka turns to the writings of poet and novelist Jon Fosse, one of Norway’s most important contemporary authors. Fosse has described the process of writing as “an act of listening” and wrestles with questions of faith in his work in a way that resonates with Sinikka’s fascination with “natural mysticism”.

PERSONNEL:

• Sinikka Langeland - (vocals, kantele, Jew's harp)
• Mathias Eick _ (trumpet)
• Trygve Seim - (tenor & soprano sax)
• Mats Eilertsen - (double bass)
• Thomas Stronen - (drums)

June 2022, Rainbow Studio, Oslo

TRACKS:

• 01. Row My Ocean
• 02. Wind And Sun (instrumental)
• 03. It Walks And Walks
• 04. When The Heart Is A Moon
• 05. Hands That Held
• 06. A Child Who Exists
• 07. A Window Tells
• 08. The Love
• 09. Wind Song
• 10. A Child Who Exists (var.)
• 11. Wind And Sun
• 12. You Hear My Heart Come