”The Fellini of Swedish jazz” – Dagens Nyheter.
Nils Berg er kjent som en av de mest innflytelsesrike stemmene i skandinavisk jazz. Siden debuten i 2004 har han gitt ut åtte album og er kjent for sitt brede samarbeid med vidt forskjellige verdener, fra Håkan Hellström og Cullberg Ballet til Forss og Mando Diao.I Nils Berg Cinemascope, dannet i 2009 sammen med trommeslager Christopher Cantillo og bassist Josef Kallerdahl, tas denne grenseløsheten til sitt ekstreme. Bandet har gitt ut fire fullengdealbum: Popmotion (2011), Vocals (2013), Searching For Amazing Talent From Punjab (2016) og We Seem To Be Drifting Apart (2019). Vocals er en film som, etter å ha blitt vist på svenske kinoer, har fått en digital visning på www.nilsbergcinemascope.com/vocals. I 2018 hadde Nils Berg Cinemascope premiere på sin andre film, Dina Grannar (Your Neighbors), en poetisk musikalsk dokumentar om innbyggerne i en vanlig svensk småby.
A multimedia roadtrip through Punjab
”Music is the sound of nature, the sound of God. No one has seen God, but nature is there. When the water flows, and when the wind blows, these leaves make beautiful sounds.”
”And this is where the magic happens: when the musicians jam across time and space with the indigenous people, everything merges into a vibrating here and now.” ”Deeply moving” - Dan Backman
”A hopeful ray of human encounters.” - Anna Westberg
The car bounces along the bumpy road in rural Punjab, India, and our translator struggles to speak over the engine noise as, on impulse, she tries to summarize something, a feeling she just got about music, God, and nature. How everything can be contained in the small, and how the sound of leaves in the wind can be ex-actly that, or something more.
In Nils Berg Cinemascope’s new performance, we are taken on a journey through the stunning lands- capes of Punjab, India. We meet Sikhs, Muslims, Christians, and Hindus who, in short sequences, sing and play in front of the camera. On a rooftop, by the roadside, in a living room, in a mosque, in a courtyard at dusk. What do they have in common, and what is it they want to convey, or perhaps just experience within themselves? Religion, song, and the beat run like a glowing thread through the films. Or is it simply the human longing to let go of the ego and, for a moment, experience something greater?
The film clips from Punjab serve as the foundation for new music, performed live by four musicians on stage alongside the projected film material. Nils Berg Cinemascope has existed since 2011 and, over the years, has developed its idea of creating music in collaboration with filmed material from all over the world. The group has released several albums, a couple of films, and has toured with their different shows in Europe, USA, Canada and Japan.
Nils Berg - träblås
Josef Kallerdahl - bas
Konrad Agnas - trummor
Gustaf Karlöf - klaviaturer
