ACK VÄRMELAND, DU SKÖNA

That’s the name of the Swedish folk song known in English as DEAR OLD STOCKHOLM.

Stockholm has two particularly fond memories for me: playing a concert there with STAN GETZ in 1970 and doing a live radio broadcast from a jazz club there in 2007 with another amazing saxophonist whose name is ROLAND KEIJSER (pronounced roughly cayser although the Swedish ‘k’ is tricky for the English).  

Here is Roland adorning the front cover of Sweden’s most popular jazz magazine ORKESTER JOURNALEN.

In the early 2000s, I made one or two trips to Sweden with Brighton-based Swedish trumpeter KJELL BERGLUND and pianist TERRY SEABROOK. Although Kjell was teaching and playing in England he used to go back home to visit his parents regularly and put together a musical tour at least once a year.

In 2007, the “ANGLO-SWEDISH QUINTET”, which Kjell called the group,  included Terry and myself under the flag of St.George with Swedes Kjell, a superb bass player called PETER JANSON and of course ROLAND KEIJSER, to whom this piece is a short memorial tribute (he died in 2019).

As soon as we met, ROLAND and I hit it off musically and personally and we had a great time playing and hanging out. Towards the end of the tour, we did a gig at the Fasching jazz club – a very hip venue in central Stockholm and this was recorded for broadcast by Swedish radio.

Fortunately I still have a copy of the recording and I have put four titles from this memorable evening at the top of the Music page playlist. I doubt if many of my readers have heard ROLAND before (featured here on flute as well as tenor) and you are in for a delightful surprise. KJELL, I should add, plays excellent trumpet on this date and the rhythm section really cooks.

ROLAND KEIJSER was quite a character and I gather he was a bit of a legend in Sweden.

Born in 1944, he was already playing high quality hard bop in his early twenties but he became interested in far more than the modern jazz which we shared.

I could tell from our meeting that he was a deeply intelligent, free-spirited rebel all his life. He was the best kind of talented, politically driven anti-war “hippie” who had travelled and seen a lot and could smell bullshit a mile off.

He was particularly fascinated by Chinese, Indian and Moroccan culture and made a study of macrobiotics – which he later became disillusioned with! He acquired along the way from his travels a massive collection of wooden flutes and other wind instruments which he mastered the art of playing.

This cover for an album devoted entirely to solo wind performances gives you an idea:

Apart from oriental wind music, ROLAND performed and recorded (on quite a number of albums) folk music, progressive rock and free jazz. In 2012 at the age of 67, he looked back over his life and career with self-deprecating wry humour in a long interview with a Ukrainian journalist. A transcript of this interview is available to read on line. When you have heard his playing, you may want to read more about the man. I think you can access it via Googling Roland Keijser but the full address, if you need it, is

http//salt-peanuts.eu>roland-keijser-in-memoriam  

Listen to the music I have added to the Music page and then try to get hold of a CD called “Back home blues”on Sittel SITCD 9239.

This is a brilliant quartet session with a top Swedish rhythm section led by Jarret-inspired Tommy Kotter released in 1997 and sponsored by the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation. Their version of Monk’s BEMSHA SWING is a masterpiece and would be one of my Desert Island Discs.