John Andrew Wilhite

Featuring: Erik Kimestad Pedersen, Andreas Hoem Røysum, Torben Snekkestad, Hans Kjorstad, Ayumi Tanaka

Tip! An orchestra that played for Nazis. A silence that lasted for generations. A work that lets this silence speak, sing, and scream. Motvind Records presents John Andrew Wilhite’s monumental piece, Bristol Silence, written for the Motvind Festival and premiered at Hotel Bristol in Oslo in the summer of 2023. In this work Bristol Silence, the double bassist and composer brings to light a chapter of Norwegian music history that has remained in the shadows. Wilhite writes: "Having known that Nazi officers lived in and around Oslo’s Hotel Bristol during occupation of Norway, and that the house band “Bristolorkestret” later became the Norwegian Radio Orchestra– an central organ for Norway’s national musical identity still today– I was walking down Rosenkrantz’ gate and suddenly wondered if there was a connection between the two facts. There was. But the piece became something much more than a work “about” the Bristol Orchestra and the silence surrounding their past; a kind of vertigo coming over me as soon as I started to see all the negative spaces spun out around this central nerve. The silence of the complicit and the “apolitical”, the silence of the repressed and the imprisoned, the silence of the absent and the murdered, the silence of the conspirator and of resistance, of refusal."

Known to Motvind Records listeners as the bassist in Andreas Røysum Ensemble and for a fine duo album with Katt Hernandez, as well as collaborations with brilliant musicians such as Derek Baron and Elliott Sharp, Wilhite is also one of the most exciting and interesting young composers in Scandinavia today. His works have been performed everywhere from big stages like The Norwegian National Opera to experimental jazz venues like Café Oto. This is Wilhite’s first album as a bandleader - and what a debut it is! Bristol Silence has already been nominated for multiple awards and we are proud to present this work of intricate layers, tightly interwoven. The music is performed with great energy and a profound sense of meaning.

The piece is written for an ensemble with the same instrumentation as the original Bristol Orchestra. And it’s a brilliant ensemble. Vocalists Sofia Jernberg and Robin Steitz, regularsboth on huge opera stages and in experimental music venues, complement each other masterfully here. The horn section - Erik Kimestad Pedersen, Klaus Ellerhusen Holm, Andreas Røysum, and Torben Snekkestad - handles material that shifts between grotesque big-band swing, structure-based noise sequences, and intricate melodic lines. String players Hans P. Kjorstad, Ferdinand Bergstrøm, and composer (and director!) John Andrew Wilhite pluck, bow, and carve. The stellar pianist Ayumi Tanaka, as always, dazzles with an exquisitely subtle touch— and at one point opens up the abyss with one of the wildest solos we’ve ever heard. And the multifaceted nature of this record calls for two very different drummers: Andreas Winther on drum kit, time-keeping, and texture, and Ane Marthe Sørlien Holen on grand percussive gestures and sophisticated colorations. 

Bristol Silence, the concert work, is now released as an album, with music accompanied by an essay by Derek Baron and visual material by Gregory Blake, who has reworked historical images of Hotel Bristol to remove all human figures - an echo of the musical concept. The album also includes the libretto, delving into the layers of meaning and reference within the work. It is a great pleasure to present a work that speaks to what a society is. This is not a piece about the past - but about the silent lines that stretch from it, all the way into our own time.