Viktoria Tolstoy & Jacob Karlzon - Who We Are

There are many beautiful voices, in jazz today more than ever. But Viktoria Tolstoy is unique: she is the great melodramatist of jazz and Pat Metheny said to her after a performance: "When you sing, the sun rises." A bipolar musician who, like no other, can make happiness sound fragile and threatened, but the bitter sound magical and beautiful. She has also conceptually framed and perfected this art since becoming an ACT artist in 2003: Whether she focused on material by Esbjörn Svensson, whose e.s.t., so to speak, began as her accompanying trio, or most recently Herbie Hancock, on classical originals, Swedish standards or repertoire from Russia, the homeland of her ancestors.
Her new album "A Moment Of Now" is now more open than ever before, for one simple reason: "The concept this time is Jacob and me," says Viktoria. An intimate album as a duo, focused entirely on Viktoria Tolstoy's long-standing musical partnership with pianist Jacob Karlzon. Karlzon's playing also thrives on the nuances, the transitions, the ambiguous - regardless of whether the 43-year-old is sitting at the grand piano, the Fender Rhodes, the synthesizer or the celesta glockenspiel, drawing inspiration from classics such as Ravel or hard rockers like KoRn. He has been Tolstoy's accompanist for almost 15 years and will probably remain so, even if, like Esbjörn Svensson in the past, he is now also on the road to success under his own name - see Jacob Karlzon 3 "More". "One usually knows in advance what the other is thinking and will do, without anyone having to say anything. It's almost a bit spooky," says Tolstoy with a laugh, explaining the blind understanding between them.