Earthwise welcomes Elsa Nilsson Band of Pulses

For the past decade, flutist, composer and band leader Elsa Nilsson has explored unlikely connections among tendencies of human nature, contradiction and pluralism and the natural world. A conceptualist from every angle, the Gothenburg native left Sweden for Seattle in 2005 before settling in Brooklyn in 2010. Her breadth of work engages urgency, high-level improvising and layered, cinematic orchestration; her artistry, an earnest and actionable desire to collaborate with multimodal artists and the changing world around her.
A lifelong scholar, Elsa approaches each new project with curiosity and inquiry. She allows kernels of an idea to alter and develop her perspective. Her openness and refinement have prompted collaboration — often leading to recordings — with a roster of visionaries, including Jon Cowherd, Chris Morrissey, Karl Berger, Robert Dick, Jamie Baum, Jessica Lurie, Rodrigo Recabarren, Marty Kenney, Santiago Leibson, Mark Ferber, Sebastian Noelle, Tina Raymond, Emma Dayhuff, the CMS improvisers Orchestra, Vinny Golia, Brad Shepik, Jovino Santos Neto, Chuck Deardorf, Jim Knapp and Bill Frisell through the CMA Performance Plus grant with Dawn Clement.
Listeners gravitate to Elsa’s sound for its truthful searching, moment to moment, within its athleticism and lyrical pulse. Elsa’s output engages diversity of sound and texture. She explores what’s physical and intangible. Compelled by her desire to better understand and connect with the planet and its inhabitants, she creates ambitious, research-driven projects that have garnered peer acknowledgment and critical praise.
The New York City based band, led by Elsa Nilsson on flutes and effects, consists of Rodrigo Recabarren (drums), Santiago Leibson (piano) and Marty Kenney (bass). Leibson is one of the most sought after pianists in the New York contemporary jazz scene and has played multiple solo recitals at Carnegie Hall as part of the “Sophia Rossoff Presents'' series. Recabarren has worked with artists such as Guillermo Klein, Brad Shepik, Melissa Aldana, Camila Meza, Claudia Acuña and many more. He and Nilsson developed "Pulses" together. Kenney is an equally creative and sought after bass player and together this band weaves intricate invitations to view Jazz in a fresh light. Nilsson and her band will perform "Pulses," their Chamber Music America New Jazz Works piece involving the voice of Dr. Maya Angelou reading her poem "On The Pulse Of Morning." This piece explores the intersectionality between spoken language and jazz phrasing and is a suite using the rhythmic and melodic materials of Dr Angelou's voice as the foundations of compositions and improvisations.
Nilsson and her band will be coming through Palo Alto on an Album Release tour, releasing the second installment of "Atlas Of Sound", an ongoing series that explores humanity's relationship to place by writing music in specific locations. The first one, written for the Coast Redwoods and released in 2022 featuring Pianist Jon Cowherd and bassist Chris Morissey, was lauded by Dave Sumner at Bandcamp as “It’s as close as you’ll get to being there without actually being there, and it’s yet another intriguing project from Nilsson that touches upon themes of experience, memory, and interconnectedness.” This second installment was written at an artist residency in the Argentinian Patagonia region, in a small village called Quila Quina. The album exists as a field atlas with detailed descriptions of the ecosystems Nilsson encountered in her research as well as art by Maia Heidel and poetry by Mapuche poet Pukem Inayao.

Host or Publisher Mark Weiss dba Earthwise