Norwegian saxophonist Håkon Kornstad has long been a deeply curious musician. Throughout his career, which began in the late 90s, he’s pursued disparate creative ventures with unbending rigor and imagination. I first encountered him in 2000, when he performed at the Empty Bottle as a member of fantastic improvising trio Tri-Dim with Swedish guitarist David Stackenäs and Norwegian percussionist Ingar Zach, but at the same time he was creating a vibrant post-Miles Davis fusion with his group Wibutee. Whether exploring electronic and digital or playing purely acoustically, though, he maintains a recognizable improvisational imperative. He led a terrific trio with bassist Mats Eilersten and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love, and he made duo albums with remarkable pianist Håvard Wiik (Wiik and Nilssen-Love are both founding members of Scandinavian quintet Atomic). He also recorded a series of gorgeous duo albums with bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten (a onetime Chicagoan and another charter member of Atomic).
The first time I heard Tenor Battle, I was thrown by the oddness of Kornstad’s alternation between saxophone and voice. It can feel a bit gimmicky initially, but the closer I listened, the clearer it became that he’d invested the album with same discipline and thoughtfulness that’s marked all his projects. He says he purposefully declined to write arrangements, preferring the let the group develop them together as a jazz band would. I don’t know much about opera, but I do know that the eight arias on the recording are all well established, including pieces by Jules Massenet, Richard Strauss, Claudio Monteverdi, and Georges Bizet. Kornstad and his ensemble smartly steered clear of any attempt to jazz up the arias, though there is a clear elasticity in many of the performances—Skarbø deserves special credit for providing subtle propulsion and muscle without giving the pieces a corny rhythmic lift.
