At a young age Hedvig Mollestad Thomassen (1982) was already considered an up-and-coming talent. Nowadays she is an established name in the Norwegian jazz landscape and a highly productive musician. With her
Hedvig Mollestad Trio she has already built up quite an oeuvre and she has also been part of many other jazz- and rock-related projects. Tempest Revisited - which she will release under her own
… name, without a trio - harks back to material by the famous Norwegian composer Arne Nordheim. In 1979 he wrote music for a ballet based on Shakespeare's The Tempest (The Storm). Stormy sounds Mollestad's music certainly is. Tempest Revisited is characterized by large dynamic differences. We can hear the dark clouds approaching full of tension until everything is blown to pieces. Her love for sounds with edges is evident: her rough guitar sound and an overmodulated Fender Rhodes have the leading part. She comes across as a wayward bandleader, but also as an unexpectedly bluesy guitarist: a Norwegian cross between Charles Mingus and Stevie Ray Vaughan. But she also knows how to deal with the inevitable silence after the storm. (JV)more
