CD Review: Ilaria Capalbo, The Brightest Sun

Ilaria Capalbo was a new name to me, but it didn’t take more than a few bars for her album “The Brightest Sun” to pull me in. This isn’t what you’d expect from Scandinavian jazz release — though given the regions reputation for its heavy music scene, perhaps it shouldn’t have surprised me as much as it did. Whatever I was expecting, this wasn’t it, and that’s very much to the album’s credit.

On investigation, I learned that Capalbo is an Italian-born, Naples-raised bassist and composer now based in Stockholm, and has built a reputation on moving fluidly between genres rather than settling into one. Her 2022 debut, Karthago, earned strong notices across Europe and beyond and marked her out as a distinctive voice on the contemporary scene. The Brightest Sun, released worldwide on 12 June via Bluenord Records, is her most personal record yet, written during pregnancy and the early years of motherhood. That context matters — this is music made in fragments, in stolen moments, and it carries that immediacy with it. Capalbo has described composing through voice memos and sketches grabbed whenever time allowed, and she was deliberate about preserving the rawness of that process rather than smoothing it into something more polished. In the press release accompanying the album she recalled that period of her life as both fractured and full of wonder, and wanting the album to hold onto exactly that duality.

That duality is the record’s real strength. The dynamic range here is remarkable — the music moves naturally from the most delicate calm to passages of dark, near-screaming intensity, and yet at no point does it lose its musicality. The writing is multilayered and dense with harmonic and melodic interest, threaded through with counter-melodies that weave constantly between the ensemble’s layers. To realise this, Capalbo assembled a quintet drawn from the Swedish and wider European scene, and their individual voices shape the record’s open, layered sound. Andreas Hourdakis on guitar plays a critical role throughout, often serving as the harmonic and rhythmic glue holding the whole structure together. Thomas Backman (alto sax, clarinets) and Fredrik Nordström (tenor sax) are strong across the record, with Nordström’s solo work a particular highlight for me.

The compositions themselves are the real story, and the way this band brings them to life. Arrival opens with a foreboding, open intro before a guitar transition leads into an interesting melody voiced across both saxophones, then pushes into heavy, atonal sax work over a single tonal centre — genuinely in-your-face before settling back into its original feel. Prophecy builds its intensity through a rhythmically free interplay between bass clarinet and sax, fittingly vague as its title suggests. Cosmos Earth shifts to more tonal, rhythmically stated ground, with guitar tone used to excellent effect in building dynamics — this is a standout, rich with counter-melodies that add real depth. Two Visions opens as a bass and sax duet before the guitar’s entrance raises the tension and urgency, the “two visions” of the title perhaps referring to that opening dialogue. Little Tiger gives us the album’s first conventional solo-with-comping structure, built around a bass solo. Ode keeps building from its reed-and-bass opening until it finally fades back to calm. The title track and closer, The Brightest Sun, works beautifully as an epilogue to everything that’s come before.

What I love about this record is how contemporary it feels without ever chasing novelty for its own sake. There’s real substance behind every choice — the free improvisation, the indie and experimental rock textures, the constant tension between structure and freedom — and it holds your attention from the first bar to the last. Every track offers something new to listen for, and I found myself hearing fresh detail on repeated plays. This is a very strong follow-up to Karthago, and in some ways an even more compelling record. Highly recommended.

Personnel:
Ilaria Capalbo, double bass, electric bass & compositions | Thomas Backman, alto sax, clarinets | Fredrik Nordström, tenor sax | Andreas Hourdakis, guitar | Henrik Jäderberg, drums

Release Date: 12 June 2026
Format: Streaming | Digital
Label: Bluenord Records

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