ELSA NILSSON with SANTIAGO LEIBSON

QUILA QUINA – ATLAS OF SOUND

Ears & Eyes Records

Elsa Nilsson, flute/composer; Santiago Leibson, piano.

Quila Quina sits on the Southern shore of Lago Lacár, Argentina. It is reachable by gravel road or by taking a ferry from San Martin de Los Andes. Elsa Nilsson was there for a writing residency by invitation of Maryella Marie. She composed this album in five days, inspired by Quila Quina’s landscape, flora and fauna.  Nilsson listened to the birds and their response to each other.  She played her flute and merged spiritually with the plants, the local tree systems and rushing waters. Santiago Leibson was her perfect and longtime collaborator. He provided the creative counterbalance for Elsa Nilsson’s musical exploration.

They open with “The Wind from the North Comes from the West.” Santiago Leibson supports her unfolding flute melody on piano.  It’s a ballad, tenderly wrapped in classical music, delicate and sensitive as tissue paper.  Track #2 is more rhythmic and energetic. It’s titled “Neneo, Charcao, Chacay,” but it still falls into the ‘Easy Listening’ genre of music.

Santiago Leibson is a Buenos Aires pianist. He understood Nilsson’s preoccupation with nature and the soundscape of a garden, a lake, a park, and birds fluttering and singing in trees. Elsa Nilsson’s flute sings like a bird against the drama and dynamics of Leibson’s piano.  This tune grows from a sapling to a tree in a matter of minutes.  On the tune “Tren Tren, Abanico, Vizcacha” I hear the jazz in Santiago’s piano solo.  This is a happy tune, with Elsa joining Santiago’s piano solo halfway through his spotlighted improvisation.

This album is as soothing as chamber music and comfortable as a walk in the forest. Although it’s quite beautiful and calming to listen to, I would have to lean towards European Classical music and not necessarily call this jazz.  Every composition rings of Elsa Nilsson’s gifts and soul expression. But these songs are very Classical compositions, with the exception of “Maiten/Michay” that cracks the window for a bit of modern jazz to blow out.

Born and raised in Gothenburg, Sweden Nilsson grew up loving music.  She sang in her father’s choir at age two and began studying piano at age five. At fourteen, she picked up the flute. She was a star student while attending a classical conservatory-style program in Gothenburg. Then, off to the United States. In 2010, Elsa moved to Brooklyn and worked on her master’s degree at the NYU Jazz Studies Program. Since then, she has worked as a bandleader and is currently an adjunct professor at The New School College of Performing Arts.  She teaches Rhythmic Analysis.

Reviewed by Dee Dee McNeil

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