Swedish composer, arranger, bassist and cellist Lars Danielsson has to date… Read Full Bio ↴Swedish composer, arranger, bassist and cellist Lars Danielsson has to date released three albums on ACT as a leader and plays as a sideman on numerous other ACT releases. He was also producer on the current album of singer Viktoria Tolstoy Pictures of Me.

Lars Danielsson is a musician of astonishing versatility. While he was studying classical cello at Gothenburg Conservatory he was listening mostly to rock: Jimi Hendrix, Cream and Santana. Then he happened to see an Oscar Peterson concert on TV with Danish bassist Nils-Henning Ørsted Pedersen This was the beginning of his conversion, from now on the bass was to take first place in his life.

His latest work, Pasodoble, is an exciting new duo album, with Leszek Możdżer, an artist who is widely regarded as the most successful and versatile pianist of his home country Poland. Możdżer was already featured with a composition on the ACT-compilation Romantic Freedom (ACT 9749-2), which served as an introduction to the series “Piano Works”.

They first met four years ago at a concert in Warsaw. It was musical love at first sight. In the meantime, they have released two successful albums in Poland, “The Time” and “Between Us and the Light” both with Israeli percussionist Zohar Fresco, and have toured together with Danielsson’s latest project Mélange Bleu
(ACT 9604-2).

Recording a duo album together was only a question of time. In the resulting well-balanced and ageless work, the intimate quality of the two player’s interaction is spellbinding.

Leszek Możdżer is an exceptional musician and composer, who has won numerous awards in his home country. He has been playing piano since he was five years old, but he only discovered jazz aged 18, when he began connecting jazz and classical music. He was much lauded for his improvisations on themes by Frédéric Chopin. When he is not on tour or in the studio, he collaborates with the two well-known film-music composers Zbigniew Preisner, long-time partner of director Krysztof Kieslowski (“Three Colours”-trilogy), and the Oscaraward-winning Jan Kaczmarek (“Finding Neverland”). He has also worked with acclaimed international jazz musicians, including Pat Metheny, Archie Shepp, Tomasz Stańko, Joe Lovano. And what does Leszek have in common with Pink Floyd? He plays on two tracks of Floyd vocalist/guitarist David Gilmour’s new album “On an island”…

The two musicians share a lot of common ground. Their mutual admiration becomes very evident on this, their first duo album. Those who were expecting to hear the occasional standard on the album are in for a surprise. Bass and piano have generated so many ideas that all but one of the tracks – the traditional folksong “Eja Mitt Hjärta”, that Danielsson arranged especially for this album – are original compositions by Lars or Leszek. This proves to be a musical liaison that promises a long and fruitful future.