Trygve Seim is educated at the jazz conservatory in Trondheim. Since 1992 he has worked full time as a musician, composer and arranger. Trygve Seim has released over 20 albums on the prestigious German record label ECM Records as a composer, band-leader or co-band-leader. Trygve Seim’s debut album “Different Rivers” won the german records critics prize in 2001 “Jahrespreis – Presi der Deuchten Schallplattenkritik”.

Trygve Seim & Frode Haltli – Our Time

On Our Time saxophonist Trygve Seim and accordionist Frode Haltli continues their longstanding partnership (the duo will have played together a quarter century in 2025) in a programme of thought-provoking improvised and composed material, the Ukrainian lullaby “Oy Khodyt’ Son, Kolo Vikon” and North-Indian traditional “Shyama Sundara Madena Mohana”, following up their 2008 duo album Yeraz with a freshly invigorated sense of wonder and creativity. The Norwegians’ recorded collaboration goes back to Trygve’s The Source And Different Cikadas ensemble from 2002 and has since spawned many a fruitful venture, yet in this intimate setting, increased freedom and dynamic possibilities give rise to even more playful, inventive but also fragile playing. And, as Downbeat magazine commented on their last joint effort, here even more “the improvisations unfold with exquisite care, in lines steeped in melancholic beauty and sometimes glimmering hope.”

HELSINKI SONGS

Trygve Seim has always looked to the east in many ways. From the nineties to Edward Vesala’s Finland through his collaboration with Edward and all the musicians around him, later as far as Rumi’s old Persia, or to the Indian, Armenian and Arab music heritage, but sometimes no more than Finnskogen through his collaboration with Sinikka Langeland. With the band Helsinki Songs, Seim is somewhere in the middle. Most of the songs of Helsinki Songs (including the title song Helsinki Song) were composed during Seim’s many writing stays in the Finnish composers’ association’s Helsinki apartment. In addition, the addresses of the Quartet members form a geographical axis with Helsinki as a centerpiece, and Seim has been playing with a number of Finnish musicians for over 20 years – it began with Edward Vesala in 1996, and after his passing a few years later Vesala’s former fellow musician and wife, Iro Haarla, collaborated with Seim, and in addition Seim has played with many other Finnish musicians, including Samuli Mikkonen and Markku Ounaskari.

With its overt lyricism, strong themes and a sense of perpetual melodic invention, Norwegian saxophonist Trygve Seim’s new album quickly identifies itself as a classic-in-the-making. Themes of dedication run through Seim’s Helsinki Songs album, a set of tunes composed – for the most part – in the Finnish capital, and radiating tributes in many directions. Here are songs referencing Igor Stravinsky and Jimmy Webb, pieces dedicated to each of Seim’s gifted bandmates, and tunes that tip the hat, obliquely, to Ornette Coleman and Bill Evans.