Nordic Winds of Jacob Karlzon 3 last night at Akbank Sanat

We have experienced a great performance of the trio of one of the most important pianists of Sweden, Jacob Karlzon 3, last night at Akbank Sanat. Although Jacob Karlzon is known with his albums and long time collaboration with famous Swedish singer Viktoria Tolstoy, actually he has really known among European listeners with his latest album More from ACT label. Frankly, I already found the album great. On learning that Turkish drummer Mehmet İkiz became the official drummer of the trio after his some appearances in concerts around Europe following the release of the album, I was looking forward to seeing this İstanbul performance. Since I already mentioned that the drummer is from Turkey, please let me add that the bassist Hans Andersson is married a Turkish woman and speaks our language very well. The concerts’ pieces are almost totally from the album More in which you can find several great compositions and covers in my opinion. There was also one piece from previous album The Big Picture. I have to say from beginning that, the contribution of Mehmet İkiz to the band was so appropriate and distinct last night when I compared the performances with the ones in the album. I am sure that everyone among the audience should have noticed the presence of Mehmet İkiz with his energy and soft technique. Jacob Karlzon used synthesizer and programming during the performance from time to time.

The band made the entrance by energetic Running and melancholic Nilha. We have listened to a great improvisation from Jacob Karlzon in Running which is very well supported at the background by Mehmet İkiz. On the other hand, the simple and beautiful piano solo in the Nilha is turned out to be a dialogue between Mehmet İkiz’s drums and Jacob Karlzon’s piano in time. Jacob Karlzon explained after that Nilha is homage to a person that is passed away in past. He talked about how short the life can be and why we need to always live it at maximum. Thanks to a record of March 2012 Germany concert of JK3 I have found from one of my friend in Germany lately, I have learned that the composition is dedicated to a woman that is tragically died, whom Jacob and his girlfriend met just one day before the accident, during a vacation. After that, the trio played the Dirty which is well affected by heavy metal music, Fool’s Gold which is said to be about the poor period of Sweden at the beginning of 19. Century and Newbie from previous album The Big Picture. The responses of Mehmet İkiz to the improvisational parts of Jacob Karlzon and the piano that is played over synthesizer in Dirty were remarkable. The musical battle between piano and hand played drums in Fool’s Gold which is initialised with a good bass solo of Hans Andersson and the heartbeat-like kicks of drum should be mentioned. The first of the last two pieces Between Us has started with a reverberant and naive piano tone and continued with brush touches of Mehmet İkiz. We have learned in advance that this piece is about the relationships between people which can be beautiful as well as difficult from time to time. The solo drum performance in Departure was wonderful. With my personal pursuit we have listened to one of my favourite performance in the album the cover of Nik Kershaw's The Riddle as the encore. The words that is full of jokes and Turkish language by Jacob Karlzon between sets of two or three pieces are taken good attention by the audience.

I have learned from Jacob Karlzon after the concert that he is happy with the response of the audience as well as the attendees at the workshop previous to the performance.

As a summary, the audience, who joined the concert on November 30th, experienced one of the most successful performances of the trio. I am sure that they will remember that night when the trio will become more and more famous in the future and they will accept themselves as lucky.