Mariam Wallentin & Vestnorsk Jazzensemble - Spring Flood Mariam Wallentin & Vestnorsk Jazzensemble

With Spring Flood, Mariam Wallentin and Vestnorsk Jazzensemble present a new collective work in which improvisation, poetry, and vivid imagery merge into a living, organic expression.The album originates from Wallentin’s stay in Basel in the spring of 2023. There, with the Rhine as a constant sonic backdrop, a series of diary notes began to take shape. She brought these fragments to Bergen, where she met the West Norwegian Jazz Ensemble.Initially intended as rehearsals, the sessions took place in a studio — Mariam realized the opportunity had to be seized. She out the crumpled notes from Basel she had in her bag, now almost distilled into lyrical fragments, small clouds of chords, memories and impressions.Over the course of just two days in the studio, they shaped and explored these ideas together into something collective, through openness, presence, deep listening, and intuitive interplay.The result is an album consisting of seven original pieces and a rare cover, moving between the tender and the insistent, the airy and the electrified. The music can whisper like grass or surge like a spring flood — where red symbolizes tenderness, blue melancholy, and everything revolves around the longing that spring awakens within us.The West Norwegian Jazz Ensemble is known for its ever-changing line-ups and close collaborations with selected composers. The project with Wallentin arose from an invitation by the ensemble and developed further through concerts and a strong sense of collective interplay. The recording took place over two days at Duper Studio in Bergen and captures a moment of musical presence where ideas and expression emerge in real time. The ensemble consists of a wide range of musicians who together create a rich and dynamic soundscape: from harp textures shimmering like flowing water, to percussion inspired by the sounds of nature, and a core rhythm section that drives the music forward with both weight and lightness. Spring Flood is an album about movement — in nature, in the body, and in relationships. It explores the fleeting and the enduring, the individual and the collective, and music’s ability to open spaces for both reflection and presence.