After her acclaimed album Odelion was released in 2019, singer/songwriter Margriet Sjoerdsma continues her journey on Northern Lights with the Odelion Orchestra, a new Stereo DXD recording from Sound Liaison.
Northern Lights features an adventurous line-up of vocals, piano, strings, and brass instruments. The album’s title is an ode to the mystical light that is a phenomenon in Scandinavian nature.
Margriet Sjoerdsma always wanted to make an album with pianist Jeroen van Vliet. And she wanted deep brass on the album and three strings. And so, the Odelion Orchestra was filled with the Westside String Trio – Jeroen van Vliet, Vera van der Bie, and Isabella Petersen – with violin, viola, and cello. The brass group that rounds out the Odelion Orchestra with horn, trombone and bass trombone provides a balanced sound and sufficient bass lines. Sjoerdsma describes the album itself as a song cycle of Folk, Jazz, and Pop, dressed in a chamber music jacket.
On Northern Lights, we have created a sound field that is intimate but also with enough depth to have a visual representation of the instruments. The idea is to let the melodic part of each instrument stand out yet never overshadow the whole. The benefit of this approach is that you can visualize the ensemble in front of you; trombones and French horn left, voice in the middle with the piano placed slightly further to the back and the strings to the right. This is not the commercial radio friendly approach, with the instruments piled on top of each other straight down the middle.
In a sense we are old fashioned, maybe we listened to too many old jazz recordings, but on the other hand as the great Louis Armstrong said; “The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician. Things like old folks singing in the moonlight in the backyard on a hot night or something said long ago”.
— Frans de Rond & Peter Bjørnild, Sound Liaison
Margriet Sjoerdsma – Vocals, Compositions, Arrangements & Guitar
Jeroen van Vliet – Piano
Vera van der Bie – Violin
Isabella Petersen – Viola
Annie Tangberg – Cello
Louk Boudesteijn – Trombone
Pablo Martinez – Bass Trombone
Romain Bly – French Horn
Tracklist
Please note that the below previews are loaded as 44.1 kHz / 16 bit.Total time: 01:02:31
Additional information
| Label | |
|---|---|
| SKU | SL1042A |
| Qualities | DSD 512 fs, DSD 256 fs, DSD 128 fs, DSD 64 fs, DXD 24 Bit, FLAC 192 kHz, FLAC 96 kHz |
| Channels | |
| Artists | |
| Composers | |
| Genres | |
| Amplifiers | Simaudio Moon 760A |
| Cables | AudioQuest |
| Digital Converters | Horus, Merging Technologies |
| Editing Software | Pyramix, Merging Technologies |
| Headphones | Sennheiser HD800S, AKG 702 |
| Mastering Engineer | Frans de Rond |
| Microphone Pre Amps | Horus, Merging Technologies |
| Instruments | bass trombone, French Horn, Trombone, Cello, Guitar, Piano, Viola, Violin, Vocal |
| Original Recording Format | |
| Piano Tuning | Naomi van Schoot |
| Producer | Peter Bjørnild |
| Recording Engineer | Frans de Rond |
| Recording location | MCO, Studio 2, Hilversum, The Netherlands, on March 24-25th, 2018 |
| Recording Software | Pyramix, Merging Technologies |
| Recording Type & Bit Rate | DXD |
| Speakers | TAD Compact Evolution One |
| Release Date | November 14, 2020 |
Press reviews
Jazz Radar
Northern Lights opens quietly with piano and vocals on the song by Jeroen van Vliet and Fay Lovsky (The Poet). It ends with the solemn music of Einzelhymne (Louk Boudesteijn). In keeping with the current era, it is about a young man who waves to an old man behind the window every day.
Between the opening and closing track there are ten other gems that, in terms of musical experience, navigate between dramatic (Two Grown Ups), exciting (Won’t Be Coming Home), exciting, expectant (I Wish) and more. All of which sound adventurous and challenging. The lyrics are from real life and certainly matter! With songs about forgiveness (Forgiveness), mortgages (Enslaved To The Grave) and the art of living.
Margriet Sjoerdsma wants to challenge the audience to restore listening, as if it were a ritual. The attentive listener is hereby warned against the combination of music and text. This album can come in quite a bit!
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