Projects

SUE MCKENZIE/HAFTOR MEDBØE

Back after a 15 year hiatus, the due release their new recording of freely improvised dialogues, Reunited for Copperfly Records in 2024.

HAFTOR MEDBØE/KONRAD WISZNIEWSKI

Playing highly charged and deeply felt freely improvised music as featured on the duo’s debut 2023 recording Poiesis for Subcontinental Records.

MEDBØE/HALLE/MALLING

A trio formed specifically for the recording of 9 songs by the danish poet Martin N Hansen released in June 2019 on the Copperfly label. Stay tuned for tour dates in 2020.

HAFTOR MEDBØE/JACOB KARLZON

After many years of thinking about it, this duo project with Swedish pianist Jacob Karlzon was launched at Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival in 2018. A mini-album of four original tracks was released in February 2019 and live dates followed. An album teaser is available on the video page.

WILL OF THE PEOPLE

WOTP is the follow up project to Bitter Together with Pete Furniss – and this time Scottish drummer Tom Bancroft is welcomed to the fold. A live album, recorded at the Reid Concert Hall (Edinburgh) in 2017, of four blisteringly free excursions into musical anger and political exasperation is was released in July 2019.

JAZZ225

JAZZ225 is a project aimed at younger listeners. An album of seven original songs for little ears is in preparation featuring vocalist Jessie Bates and some very special guests.

MEDBØE/ERIKSEN/HALLE

The trio played its first gig at Edinburgh Jazz Festival in 2015 to a sell-out audience. The next morning they went to the splendid Castlesound Studio to record a debut album of seven new tracks by Haftor Medbøe with financial support from Creative Scotland. The session was filmed by cinematographer Alkistis Terzi. Album teasers are available on this site’s video page. 2016/17 sees the trio on Scottish, Norwegian and Portuguese tours.

HAFTOR MEDBØE GROUP

Haftor Medbøe Group has become a mainstay of the Scottish music scene both as a headline act and through playing support for visiting artists including Esbjorn Svensson Trio, Bill Frisell and Ethan Iverson. Since its formation in 2006, the group’s lineup has included Susan McKenzie (soprano sax), Konrad Wiszniewski (tenor sax), Gunnar Halle (trumpet), Chris Greive (trombone), Espen Eriksen (piano), Ewen Vernal, Eva Malling and Dave Kane (bass), Benita Haastrup, Andy Lisle, and Signy Jakobsdottier (drums/percussion). The group has to date recorded four studio albums and one live album under the name Haftor Medbøe [Scandinavian] Group. The group’s pop-aware music features bold and strident melodies over intricately textured backdrops.

HAFTOR MEDBØE & ANNEKE KAMPMAN

The album Places + Spaces was released in 2012 featuring the sublime vocals of Anneke Kampman (ANAKANAK, formerly of Conquering Animal Sound) alongside Konrad Wiszniewski (tenor sax), Andy Jeffcoat (Moog bass) and Richard Kass (percussion). Recording took place in a combination of indoor and outdoor locations, bringing together high end studio production and found-sound percussion that includes walking on gravel, stomping on leaves, hitting trees and railings and kicking gym-lockers. The album was featured as ‘one to watch’ by European Jazz Network in May 2013 and has enjoyed extensive radio play throughout Europe.

PETE FURNISS & HAFTOR MEDBØE

Under the name of Bitter Together, clarinetist Pete Furniss and Haftor Medbøe recorded the 2014 album of entirely improvised material with engineer Martin Oswald and co-producers Graham Coe and Martin Parker. The album brings together digital and analogue processing. Bass clarinet was fed live into personalised settings in gruntCount software (made in Max/MSP by Martin Parker) and guitar played through a chain of analogue effects pedals and processors. The result is the meeting of two musicians of distinctly different disciplines combining in a dynamically reactive soundworld through acoustic, digital and analogue means. Pete and Haftor have also performed numerous commissioned musical responses to exhibitions at the National Galleries of Scotland.