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Kjetil Jerve

Norwegian piano player, father of triplets. Based in Oslo, working internationally. DUGNAD rec artist and maker of #DailyPiano videos on Facebook and Instagram.

Born 1988 in Ålesund. Played in Åse Skolekorps Marching Band. Got a really great Swedish piano teacher at age 10, who encouraged to pursue all music, not just classical.

Got heavily into early Elton John, soul, funk, fusion, jazz and avant-garde - still studying George Gershwin & Béla Bartók.

Played in the local Big Odd Band, leading to The Middle Norwegian Youth Big Band (Midtnorsk ungdomsstorband), meeting future collaborator Henrik Munkeby Nørstebø, Kristoffer Eikrem and Dan Peter Sundland.

Went to the Sund Folk College's jazz class (check that thing out!) and got to consistently playing piano with other people in bands for the first time. Started more long-term bands with Andreas Wildhagen,

Followed these peers into the prestigious jazz conservatories of Scandinavia. Touring and releasing albums with Akmee, Lana Trio (Lana Trio), Orter Eparg and Baker Hansen.

Working in electronic music, clubbing and production with Bendik Baksaas, leading to the most recent collab with Stian Balducci (+plattform).

Kjetil Jerve / Tim Thornton / Anders Thorén: Circumstances

Read "Circumstances" reviewed by Roger Farbey

by Roger Farbey
March 5, 2018

Astonishingly, this international trio--Kjetil Jerve from Norway, Tim Thornton from the UK and Anders Thorén from Sweden--had played only one concert together before they recorded the studio tracks from which the contents of this album were gleaned. That recording session lasted two hours but here has been whittled down to just under an hour's worth of mesmerising music. They play like they've been together for a decade. “Margit," the slow burning opener is followed by the Keith Jarrett-like ...

"Last time around I was reaching for Cecil Taylor and Keith Tippett comparisons to account for the piano work of Kjetil Jerve, but I’ll certainly need a new book of metaphors to come to terms with the first half of ‘Candyism’ here. It’s a notable achievement of broken, slightly depressing free music, the sound of speculative minds dwelling on uncomfortable facts and doing their best to reconcile multiple opposites as they conduct their cerebral discussion. Jerve’s piano seems especially lost, forlorn, and even inarticulate, his trademark ultra-fast runs reduced to incomplete phrases left hanging in the air like unanswered questions, dangling in a vague and uncertain environment of steely doubts summoned up by Andreas Wildhagen’s cymbals." Ed Pinsent, excerpt from his review of Lana trio's Live in Japan (VAFONGOOL)