Bugge Wesseltoft - «It's Snowing on my piano»

For nearly 30 years Bugge Wesseltoft's classic Christmas album «It's snowing on my piano» has been a guarantee of Christmas atmosphere. True to tradition, the acclaimed pianist returns with a new and exclusive Christmas concert, where audiences gather around the grand piano in Peer Gynt-salen at Grieghallen, Sunday 6 December.

With over 160,000 copies sold, the Christmas classic «It's snowing on my piano» is a gigantic success in Norwegian jazz and music history. Be prepared for beautiful and subdued versions of our most beloved Christmas songs, contemplative, yet full of details for the attentive listener. Perfect medicine for blowing away acute Christmas stress!

If there is a Norwegian musician with defining influence far beyond jazz, it must be Bugge Wesseltoft. In addition to being a jazz virtuoso on keyboard instruments and running the record label Jazzland Recordings, he is a pioneer in modernising electronic jazz music. At the same time he has found time to produce Jan Eggum and tour with Jan Garbarek, just to mention a fraction of his engagements.

Bugge Wesseltoft talks about the background of the record himself:

"Snowing on my piano" was made out of a desire for calm and peace at Christmas, and a break from stress, gift hysteria and having to be so violently happy all the time. As a young man I worked at an emergency department at a psychiatric hospital and it was a shock for me to discover that Christmas is also a season for depression, loneliness and domestic violence. When a German record label asked me to make an album with only solo piano and Christmas songs I was strongly hesitant, but in the end chose to record it on the condition that I could do it in my own way. Being fond of each other and having time for each other is the most important thing we can do at Christmas."