Keep the light in your eyes

The album "Keep the light in your eyes" (2001)

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Hugo Rasmussen and I had met a few years before we made the album ”Keep the light in your eyes”.
We clicked immediately both personally and musically, and shortly after we began playing and touring together.

In the beginning it was a mix of my own songs and other peoples works, mainly in the jazzy genre and some Cornelis Vreeswijk tunes. In exactly those two genres, Hugo probably was the best choice in the country having played a lot with Cornelis and with people like Dexter Gordon, Ben Webster, Svend Asmussen and Harry "Sweets" Edison

Later we played more  of my songs got into the reoertoire, and on the album we ended up with seven homegrown songs, two Cornelis, one Bo Kaspers Orkester and two american traditionals.

The album was recorded as a pure duo-album at my own ”Village Pond Studio” in three days in 2000 with Jørgen Knub as a recording engineer. ”The water is wide” was recorded at Sweet Silence with Flemming Rasmussen as engineer and Jesper Nordenstrøm on the grand piano.

​At the time I was working for Denmark Radio as both guitarist, arranger and producer, and they generously let us borrow some nice stuff like Neuman mics and Tubetec preamps and comps.

At the same time I was producing and arranging an album with Denmark Radio Sinfonietta and a rhythgroup consisting of Klaus Menzer, Jon Bruland, Rune Harder Olesen, Jesper Nordenstrøm og myself. Solo artists were Poul Dissing, Alberte, Kaya Brüel and me.
Talking with the leader of the orchestra Kim Bohr, we found out that the orchestra had two days off later that month, and as they were paid monthly and the studio was free, we thought I t would be a nice idea to try to put some strings on my duo-album.

I was myself too busy with the other album to make arrangements, so we started looking for someone skilled with good taste and who had a good sense of both the singersongwriter style and the more jazzy stuff.
We found Bo Sylvén who had been playing gutar in the Denmark Radio Big Band and who had arranged stuff for the swedish star Monica Zetterlund (who had made some great recordings with Bill Evans).
That turned out to be at very good choice. I had been a little nervous that the arrangements should become too ”big” and drowm the delicacy of a a voice a guitar and a double bass. But everybody wree very happy with his work. In opinion he succeeded in creating a larger space for the duo and expanded the listening experience without taking over the scene – but listen for your self.

My conductor was Frans Rasmussen who I also worked with on the other album with the orchestra, and he was equally great:competent, dedicated and with a very good sense of when to relax the musicians (in the breaks) and when to focus.
Engineers at these recordings at Radiohuset (which is now the conservatory) were Jan Oldrup and Niels-Erik Lund.