Hedvig Mollestad & Trondheim Jazz Orchestra Share 'On The Horizon, Part 2'

Hedvig Mollestad & Trondheim Jazz Orchestra will release Maternity Beat on November 18 via Rune Grammofon. The group shared the propulsive "All Flights Cancelled" to announce the sprawling double album last month and today releases "On the Horizon, Part 2."

"On the Horizon, Part 2" unleashes the full power of the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, whose scrambled dissonance and frenetic pace evoke the tempestuous winds of societal strife and upheaval that can shatter familial bonds. These harrowing moments are counterbalanced by some of the most unabashedly touching music in Mollestad's catalog.

Hedvig Mollestad says Maternity Beat is her most ambitious work to date, and that's not a proclamation to be taken lightly. Mollestad, after all, has been one of Norway's most adventurous and hardest-working musicians since the Molde International Jazz Festival named her the 'Young Jazz Talent of the Year' in 2009.

Recorded with the 12-piece Trondheim Jazz Orchestra (who have previously worked with legends like Chick Corea and Joshua Redman), Maternity Beat is a true career milestone. In addition to encompassing the full evolution of her sound to date, it offers deeply personal meditations on the nature of family and pressing social justice issues. Maternity Beat is available for pre-order in multiple formats here.

The sheer sonic and emotional scope of the Rune Grammofon-released Maternity Beat required Mollestad wear multiple hats: guitar explorer, composer, arranger, improviser, collaborator, and, as the striking title implies, mother. That latter role serves as the album's thematic focus. This represents a novel direction for her. As Mollestad points out, "I used to be reluctant about talking about gender and motherhood in relation to what I was doing as a musician."

Back around 2019-when the Molde International Jazz Festival and Midtnorsk Jazzsenter originally commissioned the creation of Maternity Beat-Mollestad felt compelled to compose a new and far more personal work that weighed her own privileged experiences with parenting and nurturing against the harsh political realities unfolding before her. Let's not forget: This was a time when graphic images of migrant families drowning at sea were flooding international news. Then came the COVID-19 pandemic, which further drove home how the economic systems in which we are all complicit tear apart humanity's far less fortunate.

"I think it is such a harsh contrast-such irony, how we can be so loving to those closest to us, teaching them how every person has the same value," Mollestad says. "And yet the lives we maintain prop up systems that prevent all humans from achieving equality and value."

Jazz has witnessed an explosion of boundary-breaking creativity in the last several years. The boom of musicians interested in cutting-edge forms of fusion, spiritual jazz, and electronic-based improvisation has infused the genre with an urgency relevant to our tumultuous times. Mollestad-who likens the making of Maternity Beat to the jittery thrill of "jumping off a cliff"-embodies precisely the kind of daring that not only makes her a vital leader in the Norwegian jazz scene, but also a key voice in jazz's global vanguard.

Listen to the new single here: