Mariam Wallentin & West Norwegian Jazz Ensemble Release Spring Flood, Exploring Movement, Memory and Collective Creation

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The album originates from Wallentin’s stay in Basel in the spring of 2023. There, with the Rhine as a constant sonic backdrop, a series of diary notes began to take shape. As Mariam recalls:

“The Rhine flowed and murmured day and night outside the hotel, and the riverbank was covered with small flowers and trees already in bloom. And I encountered spring in a new place. I saw the green breaking through and the water rushing along, accompanied by entirely different scents and temperaments than at home. The familiar and the unknown hand in hand. And I alternated between documenting and imagining; about all the memories and lost treasures of the water, about the body’s longing and desire as the spring light reveals it — while the river remained in constant motion and the blue and red buds along its banks slowly awakened.”

Just two weeks later, she brought these fragments to Bergen, where she met the West Norwegian Jazz Ensemble. Initially intended as rehearsals, the sessions took place in a studio — and she realized the opportunity had to be seized. Mariam pulled out the crumpled notes from Basel she had in her bag, now almost distilled into lyrical fragments, small clouds of chords, memories and impressions. Over the course of just two days in the studio, they shaped and explored these ideas together into something collective, through openness, presence, deep listening, and intuitive interplay.

The result is an album consisting of seven original pieces and a rare cover, moving between the tender and the insistent, the airy and the electrified. The music can whisper like grass or surge like a spring flood — where red symbolizes tenderness, blue melancholy, and everything revolves around the longing that spring awakens within us.

The West Norwegian Jazz Ensemble is known for its ever-changing line-ups and close collaborations with selected composers. The project with Wallentin arose from an invitation by the ensemble and developed further through concerts and a strong sense of collective interplay. The recording took place over two days at Duper Studio in Bergen and captures a moment of musical presence where ideas and expression emerge in real time. The ensemble consists of a wide range of musicians who together create a rich and dynamic soundscape: from harp textures shimmering like flowing water, to percussion inspired by the sounds of nature, and a core rhythm section that drives the music forward with both weight and lightness.

Spring Flood is an album about movement — in nature, in the body, and in relationships. It explores the fleeting and the enduring, the individual and the collective, and music’s ability to open spaces for both reflection and presence.

Mariam Wallentin is a versatile artist, musician, and composer with roots in improvisation, avant-garde, contemporary music, and alternative pop. She is known from Wildbirds & Peacedrums and Fire! Orchestra, and also leads the solo project Mariam The Believer. Wallentin has toured internationally for nearly 20 years and collaborated with artists such as St. Vincent, Lykke Li, and Feist. She is an award-winning artist with a distinctive voice and an uncompromising artistic vision.

Vestnorsk Jazzensemble (The West Norwegian Jazz Ensemble) is a project-based ensemble that brings together freelance musicians from Western Norway in ever-changing line-ups. Kjetil Møster currently serves as artistic director. Through collaborations with selected composers and artists, the ensemble creates new, original works rooted in jazz, yet often crossing genres in both form and expression. The projects are documented through recordings and releases — such as Per Zanussi’s Li and the Infinite Game (Clean Feed Records, 2022) and an upcoming release with Mira Thiruchelvam later this year.