Jan Johansson

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Johansson, Scandinavia's lost Jazz master.

Jan Johansson (September 16, 1931 – November 9, 1968) was a Swedish jazz pianist. He is little known outside Scandinavia, and his records are not widely available, yet his album Jazz på svenska (Jazz in Swedish), has sold more than a quarter of a million copies, and is the best selling jazz release ever in Sweden.

Born in 1931, Johansson was a native of Soderhamn, in the Halsingland province of Sweden. Studying classical piano as a child, he would also go on to master the guitar, organ and accordian, before turning on to swing and bebop as a teenager. He met saxophonist Stan Getz while at university. He abandoned his studies to play jazz fulltime, and worked with many American jazz greats, becoming the first European ever to be invited to join the Jazz at the Philharmonic package.

The years 1961 to 1968 produced a string of classic albums, which would help define his style of re-imagining traditional European folk tunes via jazz and the avant garde. These included Jazz på svenska and Jazz på Ryska (Jazz in Russian) which are both available in an expanded form on CD. Jazz på Ungerska (Jazz in Hungarian) together with Danish Jazz violinist Svend Asmussen is the third album in that series. Jazz in Sweden comprises variations on sixteen Swedish folk songs with Georg Riedel playing acoustic bass.

Also worth exploring are the Grammy award winning albums Musik genom Fyra Sekler (Music from the Past Centuries) which again builds on traditional Swedish melodies using larger forces, and 300.000. There were also two trio sets, 8 Bitar and Innertrio, which have recently been reissued as a single CD.

In November 1968 Jan Johansson was killed in a car crash on his way to a concert in a church in Jönköping, Sweden. He was just 37. His sons, Anders Johansson and Jens Johansson, run Heptagon Records which keeps their father's recordings available.