Ann-Sofie Öman on Hanne Hukkelberg

Silky veils of a human voice producing sounds that sometimes are close to those of gibbon monkeys, when they sing their beautiful morning songs, captured the audience at the CD Club last night.

Hanne Hukkelberg now and then appears to fetch her music from some primitive part of her brain, a part where there are memories and genomes from a time when we didn't communicate with complicated words. The vowels and consonants of the lyrics sometimes disappear somewhere in her mouth and throat, but it doesn't matter. The spell of her fragile voice accompanied by a soft jazzy carpet of grand piano chords and sequences, is magic with or without words.

She manages to touch the audience with her whole being, from the shy glances towards the darkness where the crowd is hidden, to the sips of water and wine that moisten those precious vocal chords.

Those who attended the concert of Patricia Barber at the Ljubljana Jazz Festival in 2010 might see and hear some resemblances, just like I do. There are other women artists in the genre "woman playing softly on a grand piano while singing" that without doubt also have inspired Hanne Hukkelberg, who is carrying on the tradition with some added unexpected turns and twists.

-Ann-Sofie Öman
Covering the City of Women festival for the Swedish magazine Danstidningen