Til Anna

It might not sound like a big deal that Ingebrigt Håker Flaten’s niece recently turned 15 years old, but in Norwegian culture, it’s a thing. Fifteen marks the symbolic changeover from childhood to adulthood via the confirmation ceremony. Some families even celebrate a youth’s coming of age in a non-religious context. Others spend a year preparing for the moment. The busy recording and touring schedule of Flaten, the bass playing member of The Thing and mastermind of the Sonic Transmissions music festival in Austin, Texas, didn’t jibe with the once-in-a-lifetime event. Instead, the Oppdal, Norway-born artist recorded Til Anna in April 2019 and gifted the album a month ahead of his niece’s – and godchild’s – confirmation in Trondheim. (Anna Flaten-Hoff is the oldest of Ingebrigt’s twin brother’s two kids.) The solo album, which is a bit of a rarity in Flaten’s decorated recording history, takes a wholesale improvisational approach while keeping Charlie Parker’s classic number “Confirmation” and a religious folk song from his home village Oppdal, contained on Ingebrigt’s album Village Songs "Den Signede Dag,” as subconscious points of attack. There’s nothing overtly religious in Til Anna, but there’s definitely something in the music that speaks to a different consciousness. In other words, in this year of relentless uncertainty, Til Anna is a protector. Recorded live at The Treehouse in Austin, Texas during a Sonic Transmission fundraiser, Flaten molds a moody throughline – from peak highs to new glooms – via pizzicato ping pongs in the first track, “Confirmations.” The album’s closer, “Abstractions,” coaxes introspective thanks to Ingebrigt’s neo classical arco before settling in with a Jimmy Garrison-type meditation. The album, originally released in May 2019 in digital-only format, will receive the vinyl treatment on October 6, 2020. The record, whose title is a nod to Norwegian saxophonist’s Jan Garbarek’s 1967 album Til Vigdis, also marks the first-ever release on Flaten’s new Trondheim-based label Sonic Transmissions Records. The label’s namesake might be familiar to music fans – since 2015, the revered Sonic Transmissions music festival in Austin has presented Joe McPhee, Alvin Fielder, Perseph One, Black Spirituals, Obnox, Jaimie Branch, Carmelo Torres and too-many-to-name legends, both established and fledgling, in the free jazz, experimental hip hop, agitated punk rock and psychedelic cumbia artforms.