A Swedish jazz legend

From the very first day of broadcasting in January 1925, live music has been an essential part of Swedish radio. That same year, Swedish Radio formed its first orchestra tasked with providing music for radio broadcasts. The great musical names of the 30s and 40s included band leader and arranger Sune Waldimir, as well as conductor Sten Frykberg, and between 1943 and 1965, Swedish Radio had one orchestra that focused on classical music and one that primarily played music hall and light music. These two were combined in 1965 and formed the ensemble that we now know as the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. The vacuum following the merger led to the 1967 formation of Radiojazzgruppen, a studio ensemble that had performed on the radio, held concerts, recorded numerous albums and who were a strongly contributing factor in the emergence of Swedish jazz and its distinctive character.

From having focused on the American style, Swedish jazz musicians at the end of the sixties and onward began to also be influenced by both Swedish folk music and classical music. Among the experimental and ground-breaking musicians and composers were legends such as Arne Domnérus, Jan Allan, Lennart Åberg, Georg Riedel and Jan Johansson. But the ensemble was not solely a domestic affair; during Radiojazzgruppen’s active years, they collaborated with Thad Jones, Dizzy Gillespie, Carla Bley, Gil Evans and many other international jazz musicians. Even if the ensemble was dissolved many years ago, it has been revived in partly new constellations on a couple of occasions. Now saxophonist Lennart Åberg, who led Radiojazzgruppen in the late 70s, is again gathering the ensemble for this tribute to piano virtuoso and composer, Jan Johansson.

After working with one of the great jazz stars, Stan Gets, for six months in Copenhagen in 1959, in 1960 he was the first and so far only Swede in Norman’s Granz ‘Jazz at the Philharmonics, working together with Miles Davis Quintet, John Coltrane, Oscar Peterson Trio and Stan Gets Quartet. From 1962-1964, Jan Johansson, with Georg Riedel on bass, recorded the famous album “Jazz på svenska” (Jazz in Swedish), the most sold Swedish jazz record. Included on the album is his arrangement of for example “Visa från Utanmyra” and “Berg-Kirstis polska”, which are probably engraved on most people’s minds, and folk music arrangements form a large part of Johansson’s work. A few years later, another two albums were released featuring Russian and Hungarian folk music in the same playful and ingenious format and “Musik genom fyra sekler” is a treasure trove of old songs dressed in jazz attire. But this is only one aspect of Johansson’s many talents. He was equally at home with classics like A Night in Tunisia and Willow Weep for Me, and he was certainly no stranger to compositions and audio experiments that challenged the established jazz sound.

His versatility can be heard on the posthumously released album “300,000”, which includes more traditional pieces such as “Visa från Järna” and “Fortare men ändå inte fortare”, but also the transcendent “Staden mellan broarna” and “300,000 km/s”, which borders on art music and electro-acoustic music. The album “Innertrio” includes the pulsating piece “Snälltåg”, a collaboration with composer Torbjörn Lundquist.  Johansson also had time to write the music for seven films, as well as the theme tune to the Pippi Longstocking TV series. 1968 – in his final year – “Ljus tungt som bly”, a musical composition to Elisabet Hermodsson’s text, premièred in Uppsala Cathedral with Radiojazzgruppen and Court Singer Margareta Hallin as the soloist. In November that year, fifty years ago, Jan Johansson died in a tragic car accident and the world of music lost a virtuoso and a pioneer, constantly curious and with an unerring artistic talent

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