Bergen Brass Band has just released four new tunes on Tidalhifi.com (WIMP) and Spotify featuring tracks with the fantastic Danish Jazz trumpet player Jesper Riis.

Sessions

The band has worked with Jesper for several years and the recordings, which were made in sessions at the prestigious 'The Village' studio in Copenhagen, feature his compositions 'Salutatio Sonans' and 'Aftensang' — the latter a wonderful folk song from the village of Voss near Bergen.

Jesper initially wrote this version for the band for the Siddis Entertainment contest some years ago, whilst 'Salutatio Sonans' was composed to celebrate the Danish composer Vagn Holmboe. Both pieces feature Jesper as soloist.

Jazz trio

The two other works released are by Webjorn Saether, a Norwegian composer from Langevag on the North West coast of Norway. He is also a good friend of Bergen and last year worked with them with his renowned jazz trio.

'Rasa' was commissioned by Bergen to help celebrate the band's 70th anniversary in 2015, whilst 'Kaule' was written for the Damsgaard and Kjokkelvik School band in 2004 — with Jesper again featured as the improvising soloist.

We are very proud to release this music and look forward to working together with Webjorn and Jesper in the futureBand spokesperson Vidar Raen

Very proud

Band spokesperson Vidar Raen told 4BR: "We are very proud to release this music and look forward to working together with Webjorn and Jesper in the future."