Biography
Fire! Orchestra expands the Nordic experimental supergroup Fire! — originally the lean trio of saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, bassist Johan Berthling, and drummer Andreas Werlin — into a far larger and more intricate ensemble. The core three had already forged a distinctive method of improvisation that absorbed free jazz, psychedelic rock, and noise. Seeking new terrain after extensive recording and touring, they recruited twenty-five additional players, adding strings, reeds, winds, and electronics. The resulting twenty-eight-piece unit draws participants from Sweden’s jazz, improvisation, and rock communities. Its guiding principle is to bend and recombine inherited practices from garage, punk, Krautrock, electro-acoustic music, industrial, post-bop, free jazz, prog rock, Tropicalia, psych, and dub, forging fresh improvised pathways. The collective retains the clarity and poise associated with earlier free-jazz orchestras such as the Sun Ra Arkestra, Keith Tippett’s Centipede, and Globe Unity Orchestra, while reshaping every encountered form into its own signature language. That approach surfaced on the expansive 2013 debut Exit and continued on the more structured yet equally exploratory Arrival, issued in 2019 and comprising seven composed pieces. Echoes, released in 2023, presented an uncharacteristically formal suite performed by a forty-three-piece lineup.
The foundational trio first appeared under the name Fire! in 2009, when a booking at Stockholm’s Riche launched the project. Their initial release, the five-track You Liked Me Five Minutes Ago, appeared on Rune Grammofon, the Norwegian imprint that has since issued every subsequent recording by both the trio and the orchestra. Early activity included Scandinavian concerts and European festival appearances. In 2010 the group collaborated with Jim O’Rourke for a Japanese tour that yielded the album Fire! With Jim O’Rourke. Australian multi-instrumentalist Oren Ambarchi joined next, resulting in Fire! With Oren Ambarchi. For Exit! the three principals augmented their lineup with twenty-eight musicians from the Scandinavian avant-garde, introducing vocals, trumpet, trombone, alto, tenor, bass, and baritone saxophones, clarinet, bass clarinet, guimbri, guitar, synthesizer, harmonium, piano, organ, keyboards, electronics, electric and acoustic basses, and drums. The album was recorded, mixed, and mastered in Stockholm and followed by a European tour. Enter!, captured in a Gothenburg studio, surfaced in early 2014; later that year the live document Second Exit appeared. Ritual, the orchestra’s third studio album for Rune Grammofon, arrived in spring 2016, succeeded by the through-composed Arrival in 2019.
In early 2020 the ensemble unveiled its interpretation of Krzysztof Penderecki’s “Actions for Free Jazz Orchestra,” the 1971 composition commissioned by Kraków’s Sacrum Profanum Festival two years earlier. The original Donaueschingen Festival performance featured the New Eternal Rhythm Orchestra, fourteen players assembled by Don Cherry and conducted by Penderecki, who had been inspired by Globe Unity Orchestra’s capacity to merge composed and improvised elements. Fire! Orchestra adopted nearly identical instrumentation, the principal change being the substitution of tuba for one trombone, and extended the work to roughly forty minutes. Rune Grammofon issued the recording as Actions. The orchestra’s most ambitious undertaking to date, the triple-length Echoes, followed in 2023. Its seven lengthy self-titled sections, most exceeding ten minutes, are interspersed with shorter interludes and performed by a forty-three-piece ensemble. After a premiere at the Stockholm Jazz Festival that drew unanimous critical praise, the piece was recorded at Atlantis Studio in Stockholm. Jim O’Rourke mixed the sessions in Japan, after which Rune Grammofon released the album.
The foundational trio first appeared under the name Fire! in 2009, when a booking at Stockholm’s Riche launched the project. Their initial release, the five-track You Liked Me Five Minutes Ago, appeared on Rune Grammofon, the Norwegian imprint that has since issued every subsequent recording by both the trio and the orchestra. Early activity included Scandinavian concerts and European festival appearances. In 2010 the group collaborated with Jim O’Rourke for a Japanese tour that yielded the album Fire! With Jim O’Rourke. Australian multi-instrumentalist Oren Ambarchi joined next, resulting in Fire! With Oren Ambarchi. For Exit! the three principals augmented their lineup with twenty-eight musicians from the Scandinavian avant-garde, introducing vocals, trumpet, trombone, alto, tenor, bass, and baritone saxophones, clarinet, bass clarinet, guimbri, guitar, synthesizer, harmonium, piano, organ, keyboards, electronics, electric and acoustic basses, and drums. The album was recorded, mixed, and mastered in Stockholm and followed by a European tour. Enter!, captured in a Gothenburg studio, surfaced in early 2014; later that year the live document Second Exit appeared. Ritual, the orchestra’s third studio album for Rune Grammofon, arrived in spring 2016, succeeded by the through-composed Arrival in 2019.
In early 2020 the ensemble unveiled its interpretation of Krzysztof Penderecki’s “Actions for Free Jazz Orchestra,” the 1971 composition commissioned by Kraków’s Sacrum Profanum Festival two years earlier. The original Donaueschingen Festival performance featured the New Eternal Rhythm Orchestra, fourteen players assembled by Don Cherry and conducted by Penderecki, who had been inspired by Globe Unity Orchestra’s capacity to merge composed and improvised elements. Fire! Orchestra adopted nearly identical instrumentation, the principal change being the substitution of tuba for one trombone, and extended the work to roughly forty minutes. Rune Grammofon issued the recording as Actions. The orchestra’s most ambitious undertaking to date, the triple-length Echoes, followed in 2023. Its seven lengthy self-titled sections, most exceeding ten minutes, are interspersed with shorter interludes and performed by a forty-three-piece ensemble. After a premiere at the Stockholm Jazz Festival that drew unanimous critical praise, the piece was recorded at Atlantis Studio in Stockholm. Jim O’Rourke mixed the sessions in Japan, after which Rune Grammofon released the album.
Albums
Singles
