Josefine Lindstrand - There Will Be Stars (2009)

She is chosen by concerts Sweden and Caprice Records as this year’s Jazz in Sweden artist and a rapidly rising star in Sweden and abroad. Django Bates, U.K., and American Uri Caine soon recognized her enormous talent, and so have the Swedish Maia Hirasawa and the Danish group Sekten.

With ”There will be stars”, her first own CD, the focus is on her and her music. Some poems written around 1900 by the American poet Sara Teasdale serve as a starting point. She wrote music to those on her grandpa’s old un-tuned piano, surrounded by stuffed elk’s heads while grandma was making (a) meatloaf…

– The whining oak and spruce forest outside the window gave a strong sense of the past. At the same time, I wanted to make something that was significant of my life today. I wanted to get at those contrasts.

The result is music she describes as “ a mixture between French 60s cabaret, pop and Swedish spruce forest”.

– But you can call my music jazz. To me, jazz is an attitude, not a genre. It is a musical form where the musicians can feel free to do what they want with the material and go for it. And my co-musicians are really able to make my simple ideas sound like magic.