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Terje Rypdal

Norwegian guitarist and composer Terje Rypdal, tone poet of the Fender Stratocaster, was born in Oslo in 1947. The son of a military conductor and clarinettist, Rypdal began piano lessons aged five and took up the trumpet three years later. When he was twelve he began teaching himself the guitar. While still in his teens, he became a member of the Vanguards, a Norwegian instrumental rock group that climbed the local pop charts, and then, after hearing Jimi Hendrix, he formed a psychedelic rock band, Dream, in 1967. But Rypdal’s influences have always been eclectic: he was drawn to the music of Ligeti and Penderecki as well as Coltrane and Miles Davis. He recalled in an interview with Notes on the Road: "I heard Ligeti's music and I decided then to try to make a living as a composer and guitar player." Michael Tucker has described “Rypdal's blending of rock and jazz phrasing with a rubato concern for tone colour and dynamics often redolent of the classical world”.

Rypdal’s relationship with ECM dates back to 1970, when he was part of Jan Garbarek’s quartet on Afric Pepperbird, the saxophonist’s own label debut. Some Rypdal material that didn’t find its way onto Garbarek’s Sart the following year led ECM’s Manfred Eicher to suggest Rypdal record his own album, thereby beginning one of the label’s most fertile and long-lasting collaborations. Rypdal’s eponymous debut as leader was recorded that same year.

A 3-CD set released in 2012, Odyssey in Studio & in Concert, brought together some landmark early Rypdal recordings from the mid-1970s. A BBC review identified in the set “shades of prog, psychedelia and a foretaste of Rypdal's later atmospheric tone poems”. A logn series of collaborations with fellow ECM artists have followed, including Palle Mikkelborg, Jon Christensen, Miroslav Vitous, Jack DeJohnette and John Surman.

Yet, having studied composition with Finn Mortensen, he is also a prolific composer, with an opus list that includes six symphonies, choral and chamber music and pieces for mixed groups of classical players and improvisers. Undisonus received critical acclaim on its release in 1990 and won Work of the Year prize from the Society of Norwegian Composers. ECM released an album featuring his Double Concerto/5th Symphony in 1998 and Lux Aeterna in 2000, an intense, personal celebration of nature, light and the mountains of Rypdal’s childhood.

Terje Rypdal, Raoul Bjorkenheim and Graham Costello

by Len Davis
October 20, 2023

Some progressive music from Norway with Terje Rypdal, Italian guitarist Raoul Bjorkenheim, and from the UK Graham Costello from Obelisk . Progressive rock from Derek Sherinian, Antoine Fafard, The Aristocrats, French guitarist Renaud Louis Servais with Virgil Donati and the album Ruination from Virgil Donati.Playlist Terje Rypdal “Conspiracy" from Conspiracy (ECM) 00:00 Raoul Bjorkenheim “Tools" from Blixt (Cuneiform)06:36 Graham Costello “Obelisk" from Obelisk (Self Produced) 13:04 Derek Sherinian “Empyrean Sky" from The Phoenix (Inside Out) 19:34 Antoine Fafard “Cape ...

Liner Notes

Terje Rypdal: Odyssey: In Studio and In Concert

by John Kelman
January 31, 2023

To achieve confluence, an artist must first demonstrate multiplicity. With the benefit of hindsight, the meeting of disparate concepts might appear inevitable when reassessing a decades-long career, but few artists actually possess not only the building blocks but the intuition and acumen to achieve what is, in Sanskrit, called Sangam. That ECM has two recordings using that very name—Trygve Seim's sublime 2004 meshing of rigorous form and controlled freedom, and Charles Lloyd's similarly successful 2006 marriage of cross-cultural concerns--is but ...

Album Review

Terje Rypdal: Conspiracy

Read "Conspiracy" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
September 21, 2020

Given what we're going through hour after battered hour in summer 2020, any artistic endeavor entitled Conspiracy just might be the last thing you'd want to get involved with. But Terje Rypdal, a true master for reaching beyond troubled layers and into the beating heart, offers a conspiracy of open anticipation and expansive terrains. When was the last time you heard that emanating from whatever your audio set up or streaming device of choice? Like Whenever I Seem ...

Album Review

Terje Rypdal: Bleak House

Read "Bleak House" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
September 15, 2017

Psychedelic rock was hardly a recognized genre in 1967 Norway, but it was where a self-taught guitarist, barely out of his teens, made a brief stop on his way to becoming a global force in music. Terje Rypdal recorded a single album with a group called The Dream that year. The group subsequently signed with Polydor Records and disbanded before recording again. It proved to be an open door for Rypdal as he stayed with the label under cover of ...

Rediscovery

Terje Rypdal: If Mountains Could Sing

by John Kelman
January 9, 2015

Terje RypdalIf Mountains Could Sing ECM Records1995 Today's Rediscovery is If Mountains Could Sing, an album that stands out in Terje Rypdal's career for its marriage of his two seemingly (but clearly not necessarily) divergent paths: one, the rock-edged improvising guitarist; the other, the classical composer of contemporary music first inspired when he heard the music of microtonal groundbreaker György Ligeti in Stanley Kubrick's similarly innovative 1978 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. It ...

Album Review

Terje Rypdal: Melodic Warrior

Read "Melodic Warrior" reviewed by John Kelman

by John Kelman
August 30, 2013

Some albums are worth the wait, even if that wait is a full decade. The lion's share of guitarist Terje Rypdal's Melodic Warrior is devoted to the nine-movement title suite, a 2003 recording with the Bruckner Orchester Linz and, most importantly, the Hilliard Ensemble, the vocal ensemble that leapt to greater fame with Officium (ECM, 1993), the first of three recordings with Rypdal's fellow countryman, Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek. The four-movement “And the Sky was Coloured with Waterfalls and Angels," ...

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Extended Analysis

Very Much Alive

by John Kelman
September 30, 2010

[NOTE]: This review is being republished as a celebration of just one aspect of the life of drummer Paolo Vinaccia, who passed away after a lengthy battle with cancer on July 5, 2019. Best-known in Norway, where he emigrated from Italy in 1979, enjoying a busy career with artists including Arild Andersen, Terje Rypdal, Mike Mainieri, Bendik Hofseth, Bugge Wesseltoft and Palle Mikkelborg, amongst many others. Vinaccia's big heart and warm concern for others made him everybody's best friend, and ...

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Recording

Rypdal/Vitous/DeJohnette: S/T (ECM 1125)

Source: Between Sound and Space - An ECM Records Resource
March 21, 2011

Terje Rypdal/Miroslav Vitous/Jack DeJohnette

Terje Rypdal guitar, guitar synthesizer, organ Miroslav Vitous double-bass, electric piano Jack DeJohnette drums Recorded June 1978 at Talent Studio, Oslo Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug Produced by Manfred Eicher

Terje Rypdal/Miroslav Vitous/Jack DeJohnette joins its eponymous crew in a one-off trio date for the ages. Although billed as something of a Rypdal venture, the album is primarily a canvas for Vitous, who bubbles forth ...
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Recording

Waves (ECM 1110)

Source: Between Sound and Space - An ECM Records Resource
January 30, 2011

Terje Rypdal Waves

Terje Rypdal electric guitar, keyboard, synthesizer Palle Mikkelborg trumpet, fluegelhorn, RMI, tac piano, ring modulator Sveinung Hovensjø basses Jon Christensen drums, percussion Recorded September 1977 at Talent Studio, Oslo Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug Produced by Manfred Eicher One is often tempted to appreciate Terje Rypdal through the lens of some icy Nordic mystique that, while certainly supported by the sleeves that adorn his ...
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Recording

Terje Rypdal - Crime Scene (2010)

Source: Something Else!
July 16, 2010

By PicoIf you're a big ECM Records fan like I am, then you'd probably even remember your first ECM record. For a lot of those types, this one is most likely their first ECM. For me, though, it was Terje's Rypdal's Waves, which I picked up just a few years after its 1977 release because I once caught the opening tune “Per Ulv" on college radio and became entranced by it's hypnotic rhythms and suspended melodies. Since then, ...
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Interview

Terje Rypdal Interviewed at AAJ

Source: All About Jazz
March 6, 2006

Norwegian guitar legend Terje Rypdal has been a mainstay of the ECM label nearly since its inception. His latest release, Vossabrygg, finds him returning to, but expanding on, the music of early albums like What Comes After (ECM, 1974). He makes no bones about the impact Miles Davis' electric music has had on him, and AAJ contributor R.J. DeLuke encourages Terje to speak about the early fusion years and the vibrant performing scene back then, as well as what it ...
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