Om utgivelsen
With Minnesota, Trond Kallevåg continues to develop his unique, cinematic sound — a warm and yearning universe where Norwegian coastal culture meets American dreams. Inspired by traditional music, jazz, ambient folk, migration stories, and rare photographs from an artist residency on the island of Træna, Kallevåg weaves music deeply rooted in the west — yet always looking westward.
Minnesota is Kallevåg’s fourth album on Hubro, following Bedehus & Hawaii (2019), Fengselsfugl (2021), and Amerikabåten (2023). Once again, he combines historical curiosity with personal presence, delivering instrumental storytelling at a high artistic level.
It’s as if Ry Cooder, Daniel Lanois, and David Lynch found themselves in the same rowboat on a misty morning off the Norwegian coast.
Joining him are three of Norway’s most acclaimed musicians — Gard Nilssen (drums), Mats Eilertsen (bass), and Tuva Halse (violin) — alongside Kallevåg on guitar, pedal steel, and production. Together they create a sonic world that draws as much from American folk and cinematic jazz as from West Norwegian devotional music and restraint.
The album continues Kallevåg’s fascination with the ties between Western Norway and America — a landscape of cowboy songs, murder ballads, immigrant tales, and coastal lives that never returned home. This theme takes on another dimension in the tracks Edward Curtis Portraits and Pine Ridge, inspired by the photographer Edward Curtis and his iconic images of Indigenous America.
The cover features a photograph by Rune Johansen — Jeg var så forbanna lykkelig (“I Was So Damn Happy”) — setting the tone for the album’s emotional core.
Minnesota originated as a commissioned work for Sildajazz in 2022, and much of the music was developed during Kallevåg’s artist residency on Træna in the autumn of 2024. There, he created the project Træna Hawaii, inspired by old letters and photographs exchanged between Alma Sandøy and her brother in Hawaii — a meeting that never happened, but lived on through images and memories.
In 2025, Norway marks 200 years since the first emigrants left Stavanger for New York aboard the Restauration. Many settled in Minnesota. While Minnesota is not a historical commemoration, it carries traces of movement — between places, memories, migration, and longing.
“I love this combination — being fully present in the moment with the musicians, making decisions on the spot, and then returning to the material afterwards. More than ever, I’ve enjoyed shaping the sound in post-production, blending that live-in-the-studio immediacy with the dreamlike quality that comes later. That tension between the spontaneous and the cinematic — that’s where I feel most at home.”
— Trond Kallevåg
» – locates Trond Kallevag Hansen at the right height on the heels of Ry Cooder and Bill Frisell.»
– Jazzaroundmag.»
Best Jazzalbums of 2023
– Bandcmap
«Its a lovely album all the way through»
– BBC Radio
Musikere
Trond Kallevåg - Composer, guitar and pedal steel guitar
Gard Nilssen - Drums
Tuva Halse - Violin
Mats Eilertsen - Bass
