Paal Nilssen-Love CIRCUS

Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love founded his new sextet CIRCUS as a direct response to the coronavirus-related travel restrictions. He chose musicians from different backgrounds who had experience in different styles: ethnic music, classical music, contemporary music, jazz, free jazz, noise, pop, etc. He composed the music for this band, drawing inspiration from Ethiopia and Brazil, in addition to his long-standing fascination with the music of Mali and Senegal. The pieces are like maps that give each musician the freedom to choose direction and intensity. This makes CIRCUS a highly unpredictable band - exciting, intense, exhilarating, and full of emotions ranging from sad to funny.

"His new sextet, CIRCUS, conveys the usual raw intensity, but it feels very different from his usual modus operandi, both in the predominance of composed material - much of it borrowed from and/or inspired by Brazilian music - and in the presence of vocalist Juliana Venter, an actress who brings plenty of drama to her mix of written and improvised melodies and lyrics. (...) The arrangements are full of shifts, switching between radically different, fuzzed-out folk styles, but Venter's timbre, emotional connection and presence create a unique terrain. It's simultaneously playful and furious, with more incisive improvised passages cutting through the arrangements with a furious sense of purpose. (...) A fantastic surprise." (Peter Margasak, The Quietus)

"It was a communal ritual, an exuberant celebration, an ode to freedom, to life. A concert that will turn every club, every tent upside down (now all that's missing are the daring ones to pull it off). Afterwards: nothing but grinning faces, a world that has gone a bit off the rails. You never get used to it. Fortunately." (Guy Peters, enola.be - about the first concert of the tour)