johan arrias

Jurmo - background-story

Jurmo started out as a wind quartet consisting of jazz/improv musicians in Stockholm 2011: Johan Norin, Lisa Bodelius, Per-Åke Holmlander, Johan Arrias. We initiated collaborations with artists Nicola Dunger and Nino Ramsby besides searching for our own repertoire - somewhere between pop, improv and modern music - in existing scores and our own musical ideas. The name, Jurmo, comes from a small island far out in the archipelago of Åland where I used to live for a few years of my childhood, the name becoming appropriate when the project started to circle more and more around my music and my own diverse interests in music. At this point percussionist Christopher Cantillo joined the group to create broader possibilities of improvising together. The project, now called Jurmo, was about the idea to create an album that would bring together different musical approaches, like an art exhibition, using our own repertoire in combination with collaborations with poet Johannes Anyuru, vocalists Nicolai Dunger and Sofia Jernberg. The project resulted in Gnistor, irrbloss 1:2, a CD released in 2016 (Gnistor, irrbloss 2:2 containing the collaboration with Johannes Anyuru will be released in 2017).

Today Jurmo is transforming into new shapes, following some of the ideas from the start, in to a future where established themes as well as personnel will be dissolved and/or transformed.

- Johan Arrias, June 2017

Releases

Gnistor, irrbloss 1:2, Ausculto Fonogram/Sing a Song Fighter, released April 1 2016