One of the ultimate goals for an artist, any artist in any music genre, it is to create an emotional symmetry between said artist and a crowd, a concept that finds its application and validation solely through a life performance.
While this goal may be relatively easier to achieve in a large, noisy context such as an arena, with several thousands people clapping and singing to an artist or a band playing their biggest hits, to play for an audience of only 50 people instead and being able to take that crowd to join that artist on a musical journey, armed with only a grand piano and few sonic sketches on which to improvise on for an hour or so, that requests bags of pure talent.
The latter statement is a very condensed narrative of what happened, on an October night in 2024 in Sweden, to the celebrated Jazz pianist and composer Adam Forkelid, who, without any setlist in mind or preplanned ideas, improvised a marvelous performance that the Swedish artist (fortunately for us) decided to record and release as a live album, called Dreams.
For those very few Jazz lovers that are not yet familiar with Forkelid's career, it's highly important to state Forkelid's career path and musical vision that has accompanied his bodies of work for the last 20 years plus; considered one of the most accomplished Jazz improvisational artists in the whole of Scandinavia and beyond, Forkelid has never sat comfortably on his well recognised reputation as a Jazz artist, but has instead challenged himself in many diverse Jazz projects, by collaborating with many fellow prominent artists such as Maria Schneider, the Norrbotten Big Band or Viktoria Tolstoy, among others, while constantly pushing himself and the whole of Scandinavian Jazz to new sonic alleyways, vastly succeeding in this mission.
Dreams, as a live performance, it's not only a journey into the mind and the vision of a talented Jazz composer that carries, within his piano playing style, imagination, sensitivity and emotional participation, but it's also a musical platform that allows the listener to travel, for an hour, in a time and space where to distinguish reality or fiction is no longer important, because the sonic landscape created by Adam Forkelid will lead us all to a safe place, a place where our dreams, hopes and fears can be free to float, at least for the whole duration of the show.
Throughout the whole of the recording, the crowd respected a religious silence right to the end, like they have been hypnotised for the whole time by this fabulous ondulation of sounds emerging from Forkelid's grand piano, which include passages of romanticism (Liminality), dark surrealism (Repose) or contemporary classicism (The Quiet Above).
By the time that Forkelid closes the performance with a composition called Strive, one gets the feeling, dictated perhaps also by the serene overtone recurring through the Swedish pianists final piece of this live set, to have landed on earth again, following a pindaric flight through the skies of Adam Forkelid's vision, talent and imagination, an emotional landing that culminated in a fully deserved applause and standing ovation to this incredibly skilled artist's performance.
To dream is something that we all should allow ourselves to do, from time to time, just to help us to detox, although briefly, from a world that sometimes runs far too fast for our liking. And an album with such quality as Dreams, it will certainly help you to fulfil this must in our lives.
Dreams is out now and it is available to be purchased via Amazon
