In the liner notes to Öppet Två, Swedish reeds player Mats Gustafsson describes a moment in 1982 that gave focus to his life. He attended a concert in the art museum of the northern Swedish city of Umeå, during which alto saxophonist Lars-Göran Ulander used a painting by Knut Grane as a score for a solo performance so gripping that Gustafsson left it knowing what he wanted to do with his life. Four decades later Ulander, now in his 80s, plays in Gustafsson’s Fire! Orchestra, and the younger man has assembled a vinyl celebration of his pivotal influence, not only upon Gustafsson, but the course of Swedish jazz.
Öppet Två (which translates to “open two”) is the second in a series of records that Gustafsson is curating in order to fill in the under-documented history of jazz from Sweden during the 1960s and 1970s. On the LP’s first side, recorded in 1965 and 1967, Ulander leads five- and six-piece bands that show his sympathy with the contemporary work of Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy and Charles Mingus. His tunes’ assertive, driving rhythms and graceful ensemble arrangements draw the listener in, only to be grabbed by the scruff of the neck when his unbridled, dizzying solos burst out of the horn charts. If Ulander had lived in New York or one of Europe’s bigger capitals, his synthesis of freedom and structural rigor could have placed him in company with Dolphy or Andrew Hill; instead, since he resided less than 200 miles from the Artic Circle, Ulander taught school and made sporadic forays into Stockholm and the occasional jazz gathering in other European cities.
By 1977, word about Ulander’s singularity had traveled far enough in his own land that another maverick, pianist Per Henrik Wallin, invited him to join in a “frontal attack” on Swedish jazz. The music on Öppet Två’s second side is probably not the total break from tradition that Wallin envisioned, but the flowing improvisations are musically rich, emotional resonant and rather unlike anything else going on at the time. This side includes an excerpt from an unaccompanied solo that gives a taste of the technical command, tonal adventurousness and creative gravity that would grab Gustafsson a few years down the road.
After this group broke up, Ulander went on to become the jazz programmer for Swedish radio, which kept his performing schedule sparse, but he’s been making up for it in recent years. Öppet Två, which comes packaged with 12-page booklet of interviews, is an opportunity to hear a pioneering figure from the past while he’s still around. [Caprice]
—Bill Meyer
