Description
The Gateway brings together Norwegian composer, novelist and pianist Ketil Bjornstad and the acclaimed cellist Sandra Lied Haga in a cycle of new works written especially for her. Rooted in melody and shaped by improvisation, this meeting between generations is presented by Bjornstad as "a recording in which there is still room for the unhurried, the attentive, the melodic, the human".
Sandra Lied Haga (b. 1994) is widely regarded as one of Norway's most compelling young musicians, a reputation reflected in a career that has already taken her to many of the world's leading concert stages. Her collaboration with Ketil Bjornstad (b. 1952) began in 2024, when she invited him to perform at the opening of her Kristiansand Chamber Music Festival. His books were always around in her childhood home, but during their conversations, Ketil also discovered that Sandra had lived with his recordings and compositions for many years. Convinced that she would be the ideal interpreter of a new project, he wrote the music of The Gateway during the summer of 2025. "When I look back on my life as a writer, pianist and composer, it strikes me that the moments that really matter have always been about dialogue, about telling, thinking and being able to listen. About daring to step into a new space without quite knowing what to expect there," says Ketil Bjornstad. "For me, melody is not something you add at the end; it is the beginning. It is the voice that asks, that doubts, that insists. I have always believed that harmonies must breathe. As an improvising musician, I never write a detailed piano part. Instead, I sketch the harmonic framework and allow dynamics and nuance to emerge in performance, giving us creative freedom to form the details."
The Gateway is not intended as a declaration or a manifesto. It is an invitation to listen slowly, to enter a musical landscape without knowing exactly where it will lead.
"Ketil Bjornstad has followed a distinctive creative course from classical piano prodigy to jazz pianist and sui generis composer, while not forgetting his success as a poet, lyricist and novelist. They are attributes that puts one in mind of a latter-day Leonard Cohen... listening of the deepest, most thought-provoking kind." - Richard Whitehouse, Gramophone
