Jazz Hastings welcomes Rebecka Edlund, Swedish artiste with a difference

For its gig on Tuesday 3 September Jazz Hastings welcomes an artiste who is quite a bit different from the usual guest – award-winning Swedish singer, lyricist and composer Rebecka Edlund, whose music is a joyous mix of jazz and Scandinavian folk music, herding calls, bird whistles and other sounds from nature, says Julian Norridge.

In recent years Rebecka Edlund has built a formidable reputation in London and down here in 1066 Country. Her debut performance at Jazz Hastings last year with drummer Corrie Dick’s Sun Swells project wowed the audience. And this summer she opened the Battle Festival Jazz Day in July with a massively well-received set.

Her initial interest was Swedish folk music, which she studied for two years at the Falun Music Conservatory in central Sweden. Then, because she wanted to learn more about music theory, she gained a place at Trinity Laban in London. “I’ve always been a nerd,” she says “so I knew I wanted to study jazz for the more adventurous harmonic material.”

Rebecka’s 2022 debut album Något om en björk (Something about a Birch Tree) was nominated by Lira Music Magazine as one of the best folk jazz albums of the year. This new session with her Virgin Forest Band will explore the sound world of jazz and feisty folk music through original compositions, improvisations and favourites from the American Song Book.

It’s a sign of the respect in which she’s held that the band includes some of the most exciting young musicians on the UK jazz scene. Laura Jurd’s distinct voice as an improvising trumpet player and composer is at the heart of everything she creates. Her album with her band Dinosaur was recently nominated for a Mercury prize.

Elliot Galvin is a pianist, composer and bandleader whose entirely improvised solo piano album was named BBC Music Magazine’s album of the year, while Caius Williams is a bass player, improviser and composer whose range includes improvised, electronic and experimental music.

This will be an innovative, haunting and exciting evening of music which will bring the forests of Sweden to the stage in Hastings through the medium of first-class jazz. It is not to be missed.

Rebecka Edlund with the Virgin Forest Band Jazz Hastings, Tuesday 3 September, East Hastings Sea Angling Association (on the Stade behind the lifeboat station). Doors open 7.45pm for 8.30 start, tickets £15 on the door, £3 for under 18s.

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