Written by Featured Image by Elvira Glänte
German based Heartcore Records, the label created by the guitarist and composer Kurt Rosenwinkel, is excited to present the debut album Juniper by Swedish based pianist Britta Virves. The album is an intimate portrait of Virves’ development as an artist. The ten tracks presented on the album are emotionally clear and can be described as harmonically modern meditations on Virves’ search for spaces that inspire and feed her creativity.
Joining Britta on the recording are Jonas Bäckman on drums and Jon Henriksson on bass. While the album is largely a piano trio album, guitarist and label owner Kurt Rosenwinkel also appears as a guest on “Interlude” providing a musical divider in the set . When speaking of Britta Kurt stated “When I hear Britta play, I hear a connected soul who’s able to communicate through the touch and sound of the piano.”
Britta Virves is a pianist and composer born in Saaremaa, Estonia and is currently based in Stockholm, Sweden. Virves began playing classical piano when she was seven years old and was introduced to jazz and improvisation when she was fifteen. She continued her musical journey at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, and took a year off to study and live in Odense, Denmark. After that she moved to Sweden to study in Skurups Folkhögskola, a folk high school that attracts musicians from all over Europe. It would be a pivotal moment of growth in her education, where she would meet her future bandmates Jonas Bäckman and Jon Henriksson, who play drums and bass respectively in The Britta Virves Trio.
Now based in Stockholm, Britta has become an acclaimed pianist and sought-after sidewoman who has worked in collaboration with a diverse group of musicians such as the Norrbotten Big Band and Håkan Broström, Joakim Milder, Peter Danemo, Marie Mørck, Helen Salim, and Hannes Bennich. She has also received several prestigious awards, such as the Jazz Club Fasching Society Award in 2020, the STIM Stipendium in 2020 and was the winner of the Uno Naissoo Composition Contest 2016 in Estonia.
In 2020 The Britta Virves Trio played a set on Swedish Radio in Stockholm, that was broadcast on Estonian, Lithuanian, German, Bulgarian and Serbian radio. The performance was received positively from radio listeners all across Europe leading the trio to decided to record its first album. The album was recorded at Nilento Studio outside of Gothenburg in November 2021 and scheduled for release in October 2022.
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Junipers can be found all over Saaremaa, Estonia, the island where Virves was born. The hardy tree has become a symbol of resilience and protection for her that roots her to the memory of her home. “Saaremaa”, a tender piano ballad is suffused with warmth and an insistent longing for home. Bäckman and Henriksson support Virves’ piano with an empathetic rhythmic counterpoint, like friends sharing in the stories of your childhood. This deeply emotional sense of storytelling and place informs many of the compositions on Juniper. “Rush Hour”, a piece exploding with the energy of Stockholm’s frenetic metro system, is propelled by Henriksson and Bäckman’s relentless swing. Songs like “Downton” and “Paris” are imbued with the care of a tourist’s explorative and wondrous eye as they fall in love with new surroundings. The insistent rhythms of “Enigma” are a minimalist paean to the beauty of ice crystals Virves found on a cold windowpane on a wintry Swedish night.
Britta Virves | Photo by Elvira Glänte
Other songs like “A Thousand Eyes” and “Starry Night”, take a widescreen perspective on place, looking up to the stars and back down at the Earth with a far-reaching cosmic eye. Virves’ tender melodies, Henriksson’s sonorous bass, and Bäckman’s elegant cymbal rolls evoke the grandeur of an evening sky full of blazing white stars. On “Ingenuity”, Virves takes inspiration from the name of the helicopter that NASA landed on Mars in 2021; it’s a breathtaking controlled flight into Virves and company’s nuanced and groove-filled world, and a gorgeous metaphorical ode to their own intrepid musical discoveries.
The album will be available for pre-order at Heartcore Records on September 2nd and will be released on CD, LP, and all digital platforms on October 14th, 2022.
More information on this album and all Heartcore releases can be found at the Heartcore Records website.
Last modified: August 24, 2022
