• Home
  • About
    • Doug Ramsey
    • Rifftides
    • Contact
  • Purchase Doug’s Books
    • Poodie James
    • Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond
    • Jazz Matters
    • Other Works
  • AJBlogs
  • ArtsJournal
  • rss

Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Arne Domnérus

September 4, 2008 by Doug Ramsey

The list of veterans of the glory days of modern jazz in Sweden grew significantly shorter onDomnerus 2.jpg Tuesday with the death of Arne Domnérus at the age of eighty-three. The alto saxophonist and clarinetist came to popular attention in the late 1940s and early 1950s as one of the most adroit disciples of Charlie Parker and Lee Konitz. Within a few years, his own personality emerged and he distinguished himself as a soloist immediately recognizable for the individuality and warmth of his playing. Those aspects of Domnérus’s work were emphasized today in his obituary in the British newspaper the Telegraph.

His playing mellowed with age until, by the 1980s, it had attained a state of great expressive simplicity. While it was still possible to trace early influences in his style on both saxophone and clarinet, he could no longer be fitted into any conventional jazz category.

With pianist Bengt Hallberg, baritone saxophonist Lars Gullin, clarinetist Stan Hasselgard, trumpeter Rolf Ericson and a few other pioneers of modern jazz in Sweden, Domnérus became recognized as a peer of the best young American jazz musicians. His approach was cooler than that of the fieriest Parker acolytes, but he worked on an equally high level of creativity. When American musicians visited Sweden, they often recorded with Domnérus. He was prominent as a soloist when Clifford Brown and Art Farmer collaborated in 1953 with the Swedish All-Stars in four tracks included in this CD set.

Domnerus 3.jpgJan Lundgren today occupies a place in Swedish jazz comparable to that of Bengt Hallberg in the 1950s. He played frequently with Domnérus. Their work together on the Domnérus quartet CD Dompan! Is among the highlights of both mens’ discographies. From his home in Malmö, Lundgren sent this message to Rifftides:

Having worked with some great musicians through the years, there isLundgren playing.jpg still nobody who had such an enormous emotional effect on me as Arne. The secret was in his sound and in his way of nuancing each tone. He was a jazz musician who reached a whole nation, including people who wouldn´t normally listen to jazz. He was loved by the audiences.

Anyone with an interest in jazz should take a listen to “The Midnight Sun Never Sets,” recorded in the 50s with Quincy Jones leading the Swedish Radio Big Band — a classic. Arne was one of the world´s finest interpreters of the Great American Song Book, but not only that, he was also one of the pioneers in playing music of Swedish origin, popular songs and folk music, in a jazz context. Arne Domnérus was one of the great ones and will be missed by thousands of fans.

“The Midnight Sun Never Sets” is available here as an MP3 download. That piece and many others with Domnérus are included in volume 8 of Svensk Jazzhistoria: Swedish Jazz 1956-1959.

In 1950 in a concert in Malmö, Domnérus shared a rhythm section and trumpeter Rolf Ericson with Charlie Parker–although the two saxophonists performed in separate sets. The concert was recorded and recently released in this CD.

Related

Filed Under: Main

Comments

  1. Dick Bank says

    September 4, 2008 at 8:59 pm

    I had the privilege of producing the album called “Dompan!” with Arne Domnérus here in Los Angeles in September, 2000. Twice before, he was scheduled to come, but a health problem and a family bereavement forced him to cancel. We have an expression, “The third time is a charm,” and so, in the company of Jan Lundgren, he finally arrived.
    The man was was in his seventy-sixth year, but in the studio he was nearly perfect I don’t recall him playing a wrong note. If he did something over, it was only because he felt he could do still better. I was honored and flattered when he returned to Sweden and stated publicly that it was his “finest hour in the recording studio,” stretching back to the 1940s.
    He was a special man, a special player and it was not only his countrymen who loved him.
    His like will never be seen again.
    Rest in peace, dear friend.

  2. Ted O'Reilly says

    September 5, 2008 at 1:16 pm

    That’s one of my favourite recordings, Dick. Thanks for making it happen. And thanks to Doug for acknowledging Domnerus…one of the great jazz players, and shamefully ignored on this side of the Atlantic.

Doug Ramsey

Doug is a recipient of the lifetime achievement award of the Jazz Journalists Association. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he settled following a career in print and broadcast journalism in cities including New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, Cleveland and Washington, DC. His writing about jazz has paralleled his life in journalism... [Read More]

Rifftides

A winner of the Blog Of The Year award of the international Jazz Journalists Association. Rifftides is founded on Doug's conviction that musicians and listeners who embrace and understand jazz have interests that run deep, wide and beyond jazz. Music is its principal concern, but the blog reaches past... Read More...

Subscribe to RiffTides by Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Doug’s Books

Doug's most recent book is a novel, Poodie James. Previously, he published Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond. He is also the author of Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers. He contributed to The Oxford Companion To Jazz and co-edited Journalism Ethics: Why Change? He is at work on another novel in which, as in Poodie James, music is incidental.

Archives

Recent Comments

  • Rob D on We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside
  • W. Royal Stokes on We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside
  • Larry on We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside
  • Lucille Dolab on We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside
  • Donna Birchard on We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside

Doug’s Picks

We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside

As Rifftides readers have undoubtedly noticed, it has been a long time since we posted. We are creating a new post in hopes  that it will open the way to resumption of frequent reports as part of the artsjournal.com mission to keep you up to date on jazz and other matters. Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s stunning new trio album […]

Recent Listening: The New David Friesen Trio CD

David Friesen Circle 3 Trio: Interaction (Origin) Among the dozens of recent releases that deserve serious attention, a few will get it. Among those those receiving it here is bassist David Friesen’s new album.  From the Portland, Oregon, sinecure in which he thrives when he’s not touring the world, bassist Friesen has been performing at […]

Monday Recommendation: Dominic Miller

Dominic Miller Absinthe (ECM) Guitarist and composer Miller delivers power and subtlety in equal measure. Abetted by producer Manfred Eicher’s canny guidance and ECM’s flawless sound and studio presence, Miller draws on inspiration from painters of France’s impressionist period. His liner essay emphasizes the importance to his musical conception of works by Cezanne, Renoir, Lautrec, […]

Recent Listening: Dave Young And Friends

Dave Young, Lotus Blossom (Modica Music) Young, the bassist praised by Oscar Peterson for his “harmonic simpatico and unerring sense of time” when he was a member of Peterson’s trio, leads seven gifted fellow Canadians. His beautifully recorded bass is the underpinning of a relaxed session in which his swing is a force even during […]

Recent Listening: Jazz Is Of The World

Paolo Fresu, Richard Galliano, Jan Lundgren, Mare Nostrum III (ACT) This third outing by Mare Nostrum continues the international trio’s close collaboration in a series of albums that has enjoyed considerable success. With three exceptions, the compositions in this installment are by the members of Mare Nostrum. It opens with one the French accordionist Galliano […]

Monday Recommendation: Thelonious Monk’s Works In Full

Kimbrough, Robinson, Reid, Drummond: Monk’s Dreams(Sunnyside) The subtitle of this invaluable 6-CD set is The Complete Compositions Of Thelonious Sphere Monk. By complete, Sunnyside means that the box contains six CDs with 70 tunes that Monk wrote beginning in the early years when his music was generally assumed to be an eccentric offshoot of bebop, […]

More Doug's Picks

Blogroll

All About Jazz
JerryJazzMusician
Carol Sloane: SloaneView
Jazz Beyond Jazz: Howard Mandel
The Gig: Nate Chinen
Wonderful World of Louis Armstrong
Don Heckman: The International Review Of Music
Ted Panken: Today is The Question
George Colligan: jazztruth
Brilliant Corners
Jazz Music Blog: Tom Reney
Brubeck Institute
Darcy James Argue
Jazz Profiles: Steve Cerra
Notes On Jazz: Ralph Miriello
Bob Porter: Jazz Etc.
be.jazz
Marc Myers: Jazz Wax
Night Lights
Jason Crane:The Jazz Session
JazzCorner
I Witness
ArtistShare
Jazzportraits
John Robert Brown
Night After Night
Do The Math/The Bad Plus
Prague Jazz
Russian Jazz
Jazz Quotes
Jazz History Online
Lubricity

Personal Jazz Sites
Chris Albertson: Stomp Off
Armin Buettner: Crownpropeller’s Blog
Cyber Jazz Today, John Birchard
Dick Carr’s Big Bands, Ballads & Blues
Donald Clarke’s Music Box
Noal Cohen’s Jazz History
Bill Crow
Easy Does It: Fernando Ortiz de Urbana
Bill Evans Web Pages
Dave Frishberg
Ronan Guilfoyle: Mostly Music
Bill Kirchner
Mike Longo
Jan Lundgren (Friends of)
Willard Jenkins/The Independent Ear
Ken Joslin: Jazz Paintings
Bruno Leicht
Earl MacDonald
Books and CDs: Bill Reed
Marvin Stamm

Tarik Townsend: It’s A Raggy Waltz
Steve Wallace: Jazz, Baseball, Life and Other Ephemera
Jim Wilke’s Jazz Northwest
Jessica Williams

Other Culture Blogs
Terry Teachout
DevraDoWrite
Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise
On An Overgrown Path

Journalism
PressThink: Jay Rosen
Second Draft, Tim Porter
Poynter Online

Related

Return to top of page

an ArtsJournal blog

This blog published under a Creative Commons license

Copyright © 2023 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in