Monograph is the first ECM solo album by the Norwegian violinist and Hardanger fiddler Nils Økland, thirteen of his own pieces for Hardanger fiddle, violin and viola d'amore. Listeners knew him from the Christian Wallumrød Ensemble. Here he draws on the Norwegian fiddle tradition and its freedom, but what he plays is a reinvention of folk forms, with free improvisation and contemporary composition as equal influences.
Økland was born in Haugesund in 1961. He trained as a violinist at the Rogaland conservatory and at the Norwegian Academy of Music, then studied in Budapest and Amsterdam. From 1989 to 1995 he was musical director of the Ole Bull Academy in Voss. His first solo album, Blå harding, came out in 1995. Monograph was recorded in July 2007 in Olavskirken at Avaldsnes, on Norway's west coast, with Audun Strype as engineer and Manfred Eicher as executive producer. Økland plays old and modern Hardanger fiddles and a violin from around 1700.
The instruments decide much of the music. Both the Hardanger fiddle and the viola d'amore have sympathetic strings, and Økland lets their drones ring in the church acoustic. The opening Mønster, on viola d'amore, braids hints of Irish tunes into Nordic currents. On Hardanger fiddle, Kvelartak moves in urgent cycles and Snor rises into pliant high lines. The old violin is heard in Rite and Seg, while Dialog and Pas de deux return to the viola d'amore. The closing Nattsvermer (moth), also on violin, sounds almost improvised. Most pieces last between two and six minutes, and the longest, Snor, runs just under seven. In Jazzthetik, Christoph Wagner noted that the polyphonic playing often suggests two or three fiddles at once.
Julian Cowley in The Wire praised the "unusual clarity in the shaping of his music" and called it "folk music regenerated without nostalgia, music on the global stage". In Jazzwise, Duncan Heining heard tunes from a time when court and tavern music were one. He ended his review with "What a very fine record, indeed." Peter Bickel of Nordis described the album as re-creation rather than stoic preservation of tradition.
This is the CD edition, ECM 2069, first released on 20 March 2009.
