(Press Release): Art Pepper An Afternoon in Norway: The Kongsberg Concert, a blazing, previously unreleased live recording by the great alto saxophonist captured at the titular 1980 festival in Norway, will be issued LP on May 9 by Elemental Music.

Co-produced by Zev Feldman, the award-winning “Jazz Detective,” and Elemental partner Jordi Soley, the hard-hitting 1980 quartet date features Pepper, then in the middle of a late-career renaissance, backed sympathetically by the brilliant Bulgarian pianist Milcho Leviev, bassist Tony Dumas, and drummer Carl Burnett. The hastily booked appearance came less than 24 hours after Pepper and his band concluded an engagement at Ronnie Scott’s London club.

Elemental’s typically expansive notes for the limited-edition 2-LP set (to be issued on 180-gram vinyl and mastered by Matthew Lutthans at the Mastering Lab) includes recollections by the musicians wife Laurie Pepper (who co-authored his candid 1979 autobiography Straight Life), Dumas, and Burnett; detailed notes by acclaimed author/journalist Marc Myers; appreciations by saxophonists John Zorn and Rudresh Mahanthappa; and an archival interview conducted with Pepper at Kongsberg.

The collection will be available as a two-CD set on May 16.

 On Black Friday Record Store Day last November, Elemental released Bill Evans In Norway: The Kongsberg Concert, a trio date by the pianist captured in 1970. This new release marks the label’s second archival set from Pepper: Live at Fat Tuesday’s, recorded in 1981 at the New York club, was unearthed in 2015.

Feldman says, “These recordings come to us from the Kongsberg Jazz Festival archives, with whom Elemental has developed a friendship and is in the process of issuing several special concerts that were recorded at the festival over the past 60 years. One such recording is this release, An Afternoon in Norway: The Kongsberg Concert. We’ve once again teamed up with Laurie Pepper to present this release with the full support of the Art Pepper Estate.”

 “It’s a funny thing,” Laurie Pepper says, “but even after all these years, listening to Art’s tapes over and over it always comes as a shock to me how great he was. It's like I always forget it.

Photo by Tom Copi

These particular recordings in Kongsberg just blew me away. I had the same experience on the road with the band: I would be in the wings, or sitting with the sound guy, and each time it was like, “Oh, my God, this is it. This is the ultimate. This is worth everything, all the hard times.” And that's the way it still is. When I listen to his music I'm still dazzled by Art's genius, by the genius of the other players.”

In veteran critic Myer’s view, “The music on this album feels more in control and less experimental than Pepper’s club recordings during this period, including the 2011 boxed set Blues for the Fisherman, taped at Ronnie Scott’s days before the Norway concert. In Kongsberg, Pepper seems to burn with a purpose—to put on the best show possible and win the foreign audience’s praise.”

Pepper’s band mates reflect on their experience in new interviews conducted by Feldman.

Says Dumas, “Playing with Art was very different for me than anything else, because he was more of a West Coast kind of player, whereas I was a little more used to playing with East Coast jazz musicians, so the feel and the ideas were different. Neither one was better than the other. It was just a different feel, and I enjoyed it personally because it was another way for me to look at music and to approach things.”

Burnett adds, “Art never criticized us. We played what came out and he seemed happy about it. And so were we, because we were doing some things that maybe we'd never done before. Art was a creative human being, trying to play music that was in his heart, and everybody else tried to match what he was presenting to us. He was fun-loving, because we were all in the same place. Once the music started, we became one. And that was what made the band wonderful.”

The musicians who came after him attest to Pepper’s brilliance and his enduring influence.

“Some saxophonists have to work hard on their tone,” Zorn says, “and play long tones for countless hours to develop a central core to their sound. Some saxophonists pick up the horn and sound fantastic right from the first note. I get the feeling that Art Pepper was the latter—a natural from the get-go. His beautiful round sound, so full, so sensual, is one of the great miracles of jazz, and in my youth I spent hours playing along to his records.”

Mahanthappa says, “I thought this recording was really cool. Art Pepper always had this something. His approach is very much ensconced in a bop or very closely post-bop direction, but there's this freedom and almost conversational aspect to his playing that I always liked. It's on the edge of being a little wild, which I dig. And it being a live recording, I think just the live nature of things brings out another level of rawness.”

At Kongsberg, Pepper expressed his ongoing musical ambitions, and his joy for making music: “When I finish playing I’m just completely worn out, because I put everything that I have into it. Whatever you do, it just has to be the best. You’re always trying to beat yesterday and it's an ongoing battle. Because I really love jazz, there’s something about it that it’s such a wonderful release for your emotions. And it’s so difficult. That’s the thing I really love about it. It’s such a challenge.”