Frøy Aagre: melodic traveler

Frøy Aagre is breaking through. The young Norwegian saxophone player and composer is just back from Australia where she played some of the most important jazz festivals.

Her two records to date, Katalyze (2004) and Countryside (2007) have received brilliant reviews across the line of international jazz media, and critics from around the world make a point of her special gift for blending the beautiful and haunting with the unexpected and complex. A leader of several bands, Aagre has been working hard with music her entire adult life. The reward is a newly signed deal with the illustrious label ACT. With such backing, her upcoming record Cycle of Silence might just catapult her to the very top international league of young jazz performers.

“I was just in Hong Kong,” relates Aagre. “It was only a short stopover going to Australia, but I still found the place spectacular and overwhelming. The experience I had there may serve as an indication of how I work: All the impressions, the richness and perceptive dynamism of the place, left me in a state of passive, jubilant observation. I just wanted to see and sense and observe everything. Simply soaking up Hong Kong turned the very composite experience into a kind of cohesive personal impression; my own feeling of Hong Kong. Letting such a feeling manifest while I am in a particular place makes it possible for me to go back, to think hard and conjure up that emotional state. And that is very often when melodies come into my mind; it is like finding words in retrospect for something you have witnessed very attentively.”

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