Bach Jazz - II (Digipak CD)

Facts Bach Jazz's debut album, released in fall 2024, was praised by critics and brought a breakthrough of a very unusual kind. The trio's organic, playful interpretations of Johann Sebastian Bach's timeless music continue to fascinate and attract new listeners.

Bach Jazz has appeared on SVT's Go'kväll, Sverige! and the quiz show Kulturfrågan Kontrapunkt. The album has spent a total of half a year on the Swedish jazz sales chart Topp 20 (longer than any other contemporary Swedish jazz act) and has surpassed one million digital streams. The group's roughly 40 concerts across the country, from Piteå to Malmö, have been met with thunderous applause. The February evening at a sold-out Nefertiti in Gothenburg was broadcast on Sveriges Radio P2.
Many have drawn parallels to Jan Johansson's iconic folk music interpretations. Could this be one reason so many have embraced the trio's music?

On the second album, II (released on the Baroque master's birthday, March 31, 2026), the music widens and deepens further. It is open and warm, thoughtful and exploratory. It engages with more aspects of Johann Sebastian Bach's boundless universe.

The world is partly different now. War, hard power, resignation. Digital noise of harsh ideals and artificial coldness. The desire to meet as people grows. Music that has carried societies through centuries is a source of perspective and strength. A shared place. A guide to humanity.

The repertoire on II spans widely, from beloved masterworks to curious experiments. The trio's playfulness is intact. Never before has the Advent chorale Nun komm der Heiden Heiland, BWV 659 been played in 7/8 time. The pastoral Sheep May Safely Graze from the Hunting Cantata has been styled into a tender lullaby, and Prelude X (The Well-Tempered Clavier) turns out to be possibly the oldest historical evidence of agent jazz.

Fantasia Prelude, BWV 922 features a moving string improvisation over a chord sequence that, after 310 years, is astonishingly fresh. In Aria Variata, BWV 989 the master was inspired by Italy, but in Bach Jazz it sounds strikingly Nordic. And Black Pearl, the black pearl of the Goldberg Variations, has never shone like this before. Buß und Reu (penance and remorse) from the St. Matthew Passion is the album's only track with vocals.

Even the frequently played Jesu, bleibet meine Freude and Goldberg Aria flow freshly after the trio's patient refining and recording days at the Klangverket studio in Gothenburg. As with the debut, the music is attentively captured by sound engineer Åke Linton. Instead of a grand piano, an unpretentious upright is used. Instead of a majestic concert hall, we are in a former workshop. What remains is the desire to reduce and strip down, to reach the sincere, intimate, evocative and unpretentious.