Bruno Råberg Releases Solo Bass Album, “Look Inside”
Virtuoso bassist Bruno Råberg has played with some of the world’s greatest jazz artists over his fifty-year career, including George Garzone, Donny McCaslin, Kris Davis, and more. Now he’s stepped out on his own with his first solo bass album, Look Inside.
The double bass player blends aspects from his previous work by including jazz standards, free improv, and world music pieces over its eleven tracks.
“As I was embarking on this project, I asked myself a lot of questions,” Råberg writes in the liner notes. “Who am I playing for? How will the listener perceive this? Will the listener hear what I hear? My approach ended up shaping the music by trying to imagine a dialogue with you, the imagined listener.”
One track that proves to be a part of his musical history is “Kansala – Nardis,” which combines an African kalimba sound with the jazz standard “Nardis,” made famous by pianist Bill Evans. Råberg moved to Stockholm at 20 years old after growing up in the Swedish countryside.
“It was a pretty tumultuous time,” Råberg recalls of the period when he suddenly found himself touring Europe and playing the Monterey Jazz Festival. “I had a dingy apartment with no furniture, but I had a tape recorder and one tape. It had Sunday at the Village Vanguard on one side and the kora of music of Jali Nayama Suso from Gambia on the other.”
Look Inside is out now on CD and digitally via Bandcamp, iTunes, and Amazon MP3.
Look Inside Track List:
- Island Pathways
- Kansala-Nardis
- Chennai Reminiscence
- A Minor Excursion
- Prelude to a Kiss
- Gyrating Spheres
- A Space in Between
- June Poem
- My Man’s Gone Now
- Ode to Spring
- Stillness-Epilogue
