Anders Jormin – Double Bass

Anders Bertil Michael Jormin (born 7 September 1957) is a Swedish bassist and composer.

Jormin established a musical partnership with Bobo Stenson in the mid-1980s which led to international recognition playing with Charles Lloyd, in the early 1990s. In the late 1990s he also performed regularly with Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stańko.

Jorman has played and toured internationally with many musicians including Elvin Jones, Don Cherry, Lee Konitz, Joe Henderson, Paul Motian, Rita Marcotulli, Norma Winstone, Mike Mainieri, Mats Gustafsson, Albert Mangelsdorff, Dino Saluzzi, Marilyn Crispell, and Kenny Wheeler.

Anders Jormin also teaches double bass and improvisation and holds a Professorial post at the Academy of Music and Drama at University of Gothenburg since 2002. In 1995 he undertook a visiting professorship at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. The same appointed him Doctor honores causa (honorary doctorate) in 2003.

(biographical information from Wikipedia)

I hadn’t heard of Anders Jormin until I came across a thread about solo double bass albums (there are a lot of them about surprisingly – cheap to record, I guess!) and this track is from the 1991 Jormin solo recording, ‘Alone’. The tune is called Oleo De Mujer Con Sombrero’ which translates as ‘Oil Painting Of A Woman With A Hat’. Composed by Silvio Rodriguez, it is one of three tunes off this album by this composer who is a Cuban folk artist. It is pretty little tune but the timing is all over the place so treat the chart as a guide rather than a literal transcription. You can play the whole thing ‘out of time’ just by stringing the phrases together at almost any tempo, even changing the tempo feel mid-phrase; it will always sound cool. Be careful in terms of which notes you let ring and which you don’t. This is an exercise in musicality over chops. Even the ‘fast’ passages can be played as slowly as your ears tells you to play them. It’s all good. These out of tempo things are hard to get down but there is a satisfaction in understanding the difference between dots and the music you play off them.