Kvarpan

Reverse board sleeve with spot gloss, 140g black vinyl. Printed and pressed at Optimal.

Isak Hedtjärn plays the clarinet — a straight, metal variant of the more common wooden B flat Clarinet. Kvarpan is Isak’s first ‘solo’ record, but you also hear him in ‘quartet’ with himself, too on this diverse suite of improvisations recorded ‘on location’ on a single day at Patons Malmgård — his usual practice spot just by where the ferries head over to Finland. We recorded until the throb of the boats and waiting cars took over.

A polymath of undeniable musicality, Isak is a constant, always invigorating presence across a breadth of ‘scenes’ in Stockholm be it via in his own groups — Grismask, Svenska Folkjazzkvartetten, Festen — or making guest appearances in concert and on record with Viagra Boys, Fire! Orchestra, Rotem Geffen, Kali Malone and many many more. His online notoriety as @JazzIsak, the deft editor of a stream of classic jazz and tiktok dance/crash mashups is not only a riotous good time but gives you some other small window into the scope and scale of his knowledge of and feeling for all the music that has gone before.

His own notes to the record point specifically to clarinettists Johnny Dodds, Perry Robinson, Jimmy Giuffre and Sükrü Tunar and acknowledge the abiding mentorship of Harald Hult, Raymond Strid, Christer Bothén and especially Roland Keijser, the saxophonist and founder of legendary progg combo Arbete och Fritid and a veritable living library of international folk melodies until his passing in 2019. On Kvarpan Hedtjärn renders these influences in his own way — deeply personal, alluring and strange. As Mats Gustafsson says in his notes to the record “This ain’t no normal slang med halka”

Notes by Isak Hedtjärn and Mats Gustafsson:

Kvarpa is a slang word for the clarinet that Roland Keijser used to use. I don’t know if he came up with it himself or if it was in common usage at some point, but he was the only one I knew who used it.

I play Kvarpa. I played drums since childhood, but discovering improvisation fed the desire to play an instrument closer to the voice (and the impulse). I got hold of a clarinet and immediately began searching for sounds and techniques I had seen and heard saxophonists like Mats Gustafsson and Christine Abdelnour use. I discovered most by improvising, trying everything I could imagine, suddenly hearing something, then trying to recreate it.

My idea was first to never play tonally at all, to build my playing solely on “extended techniques”. I identified a lot with that idea, and for a long time I tried to avoid showing any trace of tonal playing. But from the start I was too curious to not explore learning different music traditions.

My biggest mentor in music, Harald Hult showed me clarinet players like Johnny Dodds, Perry Robinson, later I found Sükrü Tunar and Getatchew Mekurya, and it shaped my sound ideal of the clarinet. Raymond Strid, Christer Bothén and Roland Keijser insisted on me taking the clarinet more seriously and learning basic technique. I keep searching for different ways to approach my instrument, embrace all music, and try to connect the dots.

Learning an instrument — learning music — is a never-ending process. The more you learn, the more avenues open up. That may be true of most things in life, but we’re talking about Kvarpa!

The music on this LP is all improvised. It was recorded on a single day at Patons Malmgård — the place where I usually play and practice. To me, improvising means playing without a plan, seeking new paths, taking chances, allowing the unintentional, staying when it’s uncomfortable or acting on sudden whims.

The pieces are based on sound worlds and ways of playing that I have been exploring for a long time, but which take on new forms each time. Some of the pieces are clarinet quartets with myself. I record each part without hearing the others and the concepts are simple and not always followed. Nothing is edited except where the different takes should start and end. In one piece, the starting point is to play melodically. Another piece is very strong and bright where I look for the moments where notes collide with each other.

Despite an idea that the pieces would all be very different from each other, It still feels like everything is part of the same language. I hear traces of everything I’ve heard and a lot of what I love about Kvarpan.

Isak Hedtjärn, Stockholm, September 2022