Ketil Bjørnstad presents The Gateway - a new album with music written for and performed by cellist Sandra Lied Haga, with the composer at the piano.

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Sandra Lied Haga (b. 1994) is widely regarded as one of Norway's most compelling young musicians, a reputation reflected in a career that has already taken her to many of the world's leading concert stages. Her collaboration with Ketil Bjørnstad (b. 1952) began in 2024, when she invited him to perform at the opening of her Kristiansand Chamber Music Festival. His books were always around in her childhood home, but during their conversations, Ketil also discovered that Sandra had lived with his recordings and compositions for many years. Convinced that she would be the ideal interpreter of a new project, he wrote the music of The Gateway during the summer of 2025.

“When I look back on my life as a writer, pianist and composer, it strikes me that the moments that really matter have always been about dialogue, about telling, thinking and being able to listen. About daring to step into a new space without quite knowing what to expect there,” says Ketil Bjørnstad. “For me, melody is not something you add at the end; it is the beginning. It is the voice that asks, that doubts, that insists. I have always believed that harmonies must breathe. As an improvising musician, I never write a detailed piano part. Instead, I sketch the harmonic framework and allow dynamics and nuance to emerge in performance, giving us creative freedom to form the details.” 

The Gateway is not intended as a declaration or a manifesto. It is an invitation to listen slowly, to enter a musical landscape without knowing exactly where it will lead. 

“Ketil Bjørnstad has followed a distinctive creative course from classical piano prodigy to jazz pianist and sui generis composer, while not forgetting his success as a poet, lyricist and novelist. They are attributes that puts one in mind of a latter-day Leonard Cohen… listening of the deepest, most thought-provoking kind.”  - Richard Whitehouse, Gramophone 

The album was recorded at Propeller Studio in Oslo, in December 2025. Recorded by Mike Hartung and produced by Ketil Bjørnstad. It is released digitally and on CD, featuring a 20-page booklet with an essay by Ketil Bjørnstad.

ABOUT KETIL BJØRNSTAD 

Ketil Bjørnstad (b. 1952) made his debut with the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra in 1969, performing Béla Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 3. He studied piano in Norway with Amalie Christie and Robert Riefling before continuing his studies in Paris and London with Ilona Kabos and others. 

In the early 1970s, Bjørnstad began collaborating with Norwegian jazz musicians such as Arild Andersen, Jon Christensen, and the avant-garde Svein Finnerud Trio. These collaborations led to a number of concerts and recordings that would have a lasting influence on his development as both a pianist and composer. Through several recordings for Philips, he explored improvisation within a melodic framework, an approach that was further refined through later collaborations with guitarist Terje Rypdal and American cellist David Darling. 

In 1993, Bjørnstad began a long-standing partnership with ECM Records and producer Manfred Eicher. The duo album *The River* with David Darling, together with the quartet recording *The Sea*, attracted international attention. Film director Jean-Luc Godard used Bjørnstad’s music in several of his films, and Bjørnstad went on to perform at major jazz festivals in cities including London, Frankfurt, Nancy, Vienna, Kongsberg, Molde, Istanbul, Montreal, Shanghai, and Jarasum in South Korea. He also appeared at the Spoleto Festival in the United States. 

Beginning in 2000, Bjørnstad released several albums on Universal Music’s EmArcy label. Both his albums, Grace and Floating reached the top of the European jazz charts. During the same period, he also began working with the Norwegian label Grappa. 

In addition to his musical career, Ketil Bjørnstad is an accomplished writer. His novels have been published in more than 22 countries. He has received the French Prix des Lecteurs and has been nominated for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Several of his books have become bestsellers in Germany, France, and Norway, with total sales exceeding one million copies. 

ABOUT SANDRA LIED HAGA

Norwegian cellist Sandra Lied Haga is widely regarded as one of the leading talents of her generation. Having won four international competitions, numerous European awards, and the prestigious Equinor Classical Music Award. 

Since making her debut at London’s Wigmore Hall at the age of twelve, Sandra’s passionate performances and deeply expressive musicianship have resonated with audiences across the globe. She has appeared in many of the world’s most prestigious venues, including the Royal Albert Hall and Wigmore Hall in London, Carnegie Hall in New York, the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, the St. Petersburg Philharmonia, the Athenaeum in Bucharest, the Salzburg Festival Hall, TivoliVredenburg in Utrecht, the Philharmonic Hall of Vilnius, and the Verbier Festival, among many others. 

Recent highlights include performances of Brahms’s Double Concerto for Violin and Cello alongside Maxim Vengerov at London’s Royal Albert Hall as well as in Istanbul and Eskişehir, a three-week tour of Japan with Midori, the release of a new album on Simax, and her debut in the “Carnegie Hall Presents” series. 

Throughout her career, Sandra has collaborated with many of the world’s most distinguished musicians, including Maxim Vengerov, Leif Ove Andsnes, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Janine Jansen, Yo-Yo Ma, Midori, Truls Mørk, and Paul Lewis. She has also appeared with numerous European orchestras under conductors such as Thomas Søndergård, James Gaffigan, Juanjo Mena, Conrad van Alphen, Rodolfo Saglimbeni, Joana Carneiro, Nathanaël Iselin, Terje Mikkelsen, Ari Rasilainen, Marios Papadopoulos, Sergej Krylov, Georgios Balatsinos, Shao-Chia Lü, Michael Repper, and Can Okan. In 2019, she recorded her debut album in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, featuring Dvořák’s Cello Concerto and the original version of Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations. Released on Simax Classics/Naxos in May 2020, the album earned international acclaim and a nomination for the prestigious Norwegian Spellemannprisen. Following her participation in the Verbier Festival Academy, she was invited to give a recital at the Verbier Festival at the age of just seventeen. Invitations from other major international festivals soon followed, including the Utrecht Festival, Salzburger Festspiele, Moritzburg Festival, Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad, Weilburg Schloss Festspiele, Heidelberger Frühling, and the Pärnu Music Festival. She is also a regular guest at the major music festivals throughout Scandinavia. 

Sandra plays a 1730 cello by Joannes Florenus Guidantus of Bologna, generously provided by Dextra Musica.