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Viktoria Tolstoy
Stealing Moments

VÖ: 29.02.2024

Genre: Jazz from Sweden, Stimmen

CD

€18.00*

ACT 9747-2, 614427974723
Viktoria Tolstoy / vocals
Joel Lyssarides / piano & keys
Krister Jonsson / guitar
Mattias Svensson / bass
Rasmus Kihlberg / drums & percussion

produced by the artist

Viktoria Tolstoy's ACT debut album, "Shining On You" from 2004, can now be seen as a defining moment, marking the beginning of the continuing success story of popular jazz voices from Scandinavia. The music was written by Esbjörn Svensson, who also formed the core band together with Dan Berglund and Magnus Öström and was soon to become world-famous as "e.s.t.". The album, produced by Nils Landgren, was also a gath-ering of the ACT family of artists - also in its infancy back then - who joined the session as guests.

Exactly 20 years later, in "Stealing Moments", Viktoria Tolstoy has once again taken up the idea of “the family" making music together
. The compositions are by a whole host of current ACT artists, many of whom had an involvement in "Shining on You". It includes "Hands Off", originally an instrumental composition by the late Esbjörn Svensson; Svensson's widow Eva has written a very fine new lyric for it. Long-time friends and companions - Nils Landgren, Ida Sand, Wolfgang Haffner, Cæcilie Norby, Lars Danielsson, Iiro Rantala and Jan Lundgren - have all written new music specifically with Tolstoy and her voice in mind.

"When you sing, the sun rises," Pat Metheny once told Viktoria Tolstoy
. The thread which unifies all the tracks on "Stealing Moments" is her strong, crystal clear voice, together with her temperament, in which lightness and coruscating energy always irresistibly co-exist. Listeners are going to enjoy this music as much as she does...and she knows it. Or as she says, subtly re-forming the words of the album title into an implicit invitation: "Let me steal a little bit of time to listen."
Viktoria Tolstoy
Artistic talent runs in the family of Swedish singer Viktoria Tolstoy. Her great-great-grandfather was the legendary Russian national poet Leo Tolstoy. From a very young age on, Viktoria made her way through the jazz clubs of Stockholm and played with leading Swedish jazz musicians like Svante Thuresson. In 1994, at the age of 20, she recorded her first album. Two years later, with the album "För Älskad," she became an overnight pop star in her homeland. This set the stage for her collaboration with Esbjörn Svensson and e.s.t. He produced and wrote songs for "White Russian," the first Scandinavian record released by the legendary Blue Note Label. Nils "Mr. Red Horn" Landgren also produced and played with her, and in 2003, she followed him and Svensson to ACT as an exclusive artist for the label. Since then, Tolstoy has established herself as one of the leading voices in contemporary jazz. Crystal clear, dynamic, wild, and vibrant, yet simultaneously prosaic and grounded, her voice is perhaps the most brilliant of all Scandinavian singers. When Viktoria Tolstoy performs a song, she doesn't just interpret it; she shapes and molds it in a unique way.
CD
€17.50*