Starfall

"This is film music where your mind is the screen.."

Morten Georg Gismervik releases his fourth album, Starfall, on Purple Theory
Records on 16 October 2026. The music was originally written for his prizewinner’s concert at the Sildajazz festival in 2023, and is recorded with his working quintet and five guest musicians on strings.

Starfall utilizes the night sky as its starting point. The acoustic and the electric sit next to each other throughout the entire record, and jazz, classical music, prog and modern sound design move in and out of one another. The music shifts between the intimate and the expansive, and the narrating voice keeps moving from one musician to the next.

The quintet has two keyboard players. Øystein Folkedal and Harsha Jerome trade piano, Rhodes and synth from track to track, so the colour of the band keeps shifting without the lineup changing. At the same time, the quintet invites string instruments into their soundscape through Håkon Huldt-Nystrøms use of bowed double bass, and Jon Espelids orchestral approach to the drums. Six of the eleven tracks include strings, from their sparse melodies on Ptolemy’s Chamber, to more central roles on tracks such as, "The Way of All Things" and "Epilogue", where Tuva Halse appears as violin soloist.

Gismervik made his debut in 2018 and has built his voice around the electric guitar as a lyrical,
storytelling instrument. His previous album, Dunes at Night, released on Hubro in 2023. He received the Sildajazz Prize in 2022, and Starfall is the work he wrote for the prizewinner’s concert the following year. The compositions draw their inspiration from Lars Danielsson, Tigran Hamasyan, Eivind Aarset and Esbjörn Svensson Trio, among others.

"He is exactly the guitarist Norwegian jazz needs right now, sophisticated, but also with a
slightly gnarly 80s prog/fusion style that hits you straight in the mains."
-Audun Vinger, Jazz i Norge, 2023 (translated from Norwegian)