Biography
Active across Norway’s hard rock and jazz landscapes, guitarist, composer, and improviser Hedwig Mollestad Thomassen fronts her personal trio featuring bassist Ellen Brekken alongside drummer Ivar Joe Bjørnstad while also teaming up with various jazz and rock performers. Blending heavy metal and hard rock components drawn especially from Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin with the jagged improvisational jazz of figures like Sonny Sharrock, James Blood Ulmer, and Pete Cosey, her approach comes through on releases such as 2013’s All of Them Witches and Black Stabat Mater from three years afterward. Capturing the ensemble’s onstage vitality, Smells Funny from 2019 took shape during a live studio session. Ekhidna arrived the following year and presented Mollestad outside her trio format as she directed a five-piece group that welcomed Elephant9 drummer Torstein Lofthus and Portuguese trumpeter Susana Santos Silva. Tempest Revisited, performed by a septet, came out in November.
Born in Ålesund, Møre og Romsdal, Norway in 1982, Thomassen picked up the guitar at age ten on her mother’s nylon-string instrument. Although she lacked formal musical schooling, her father’s sizable jazz and rock & roll collection served as her training ground. While still in high school she rendered a biography of Jimi Hendrix into Norwegian for a class assignment, absorbing not only his pioneering recordings but also the guitar approaches of Jimmy Page, Sonny Sharrock, Fred Frith, Pete Cosey, John McLaughlin, and Carlos Santana.
Prior to assembling her trio she worked with a broad range of musicians and groups that included the Bronco Busters, Sweet Potatoes, Vom, and an earlier incarnation of the Mollestad Trio.
Her recording debut occurred as a guest on the Cumshots’ fourth album, A Life Less Necessary, issued in 2009 by the environmental-activist duo Kristopher Schau and Ole Petter Andreassen. That same year she also concentrated on improvisation and jazz performance, receiving the Jazztalentprisen for Young Jazz Talent of the Year at the Molde International Jazz Festival in Norway, after which she immediately formed the Hedwig Mollestad Trio with Brekken and Bjørnstad.
In 2010 she appeared as guest soloist on Jarle Bernhoft’s cassette-only release 1:Man 2:Band. Her trio’s first album, Shoot!, surfaced on Rune Grammofon in 2011 and earned widespread praise for its vigorous fusion of hard rock, metal, and free jazz. Later that year she served as soloist on the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra’s Migrations, the Jon Eberson Group’s The Coarse Sand & The Names We Wrote, and Hilde Marie Kjersem’s Let’s Let Go.
During 2012 Mollestad, handling both guitar and Hammond B-3, joined Andreassen’s expansive, rotating progressive supergroup El Doom & The Born Electric, whose lineup also comprised Ståle Storløkken, Eberson, brothers Håvard and Brynjar Takle Ohr on drums and guitar, bassist Nikolai Hængsle Eilertsen, and Mikael Lindquist on Mellotron; the ensemble delivered a self-titled album on Rune Grammofon, and her trio performed at Steinkjerfestivalen that summer.
The Hedwig Mollestad Trio’s second recording, All of Them Witches, appeared in 2013 to broad acclaim within jazz, avant-garde, and indie-rock communities. She also recorded the studio album Ekko with the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra that year and joined them for live appearances. In June 2014 the HM3 released its third album, Enfant Terrible; the group’s sound continued to develop through live work as Mollestad and her bandmates leaned further into improvisation and free jazz while retaining their rock foundation. In 2016 Rune Grammofon issued both the double-length Evil in Oslo and the studio set Black Stabat Mater. Following those releases the trio’s emphasis shifted once more toward avant-jazz even as they supported Black Sabbath and guitarist John McLaughlin at festivals throughout Europe. In 2018 the trio returned with Smells Funny on Rune Grammofon, a fresh examination of hard rock that highlighted Mollestad’s emerging command of distinctive riffs and intense, unruly, emotionally charged solos.
For 2020’s Ekhidna, Mollestad moved beyond her longtime trio for the first time, gathering a quintet of Norwegian-scene colleagues that included Elephant9 drummer Torstein Lofthus, Portuguese trumpeter Susana Santos Silva, jazz keyboardists Marte Eberson and Erlend Slettevoll, and percussionist Ole Mofjell. The resulting expansive sound, which appeared to fuse the aesthetics of Black Sabbath with John McLaughlin’s early fusion style, placed on year-end lists worldwide. Nine months later she reconvened with her trio for 2021’s Ding Dong. You’re Dead., which explored a contrasting dynamic: alongside exclusively riff-heavy jazz fusion, Mollestad presented more nuanced originals possessing greater dynamic range. Brekken supplemented her signature electric bass with acoustic bass guitar and upright, while drummer Bjørnstad displayed his more refined jazz technique alongside his driving rock drumming.
In November Mollestad released Tempest Revisited, her third project in eighteen months. The studio recording traces its origins to 1998, when her label Rune Grammofon, then newly founded, issued Electric, the collected electronic works of Norwegian composer Arne Nordheim. That year excerpts from Nordheim’s best-known composition The Tempest were selected for the opening of Parken, a new arts-and-culture venue in Mollestad’s birthplace Ålesund. In 2018, marking the twentieth anniversary of Electric, the label invited Mollestad to interpret the work; equally inspired by the score and her personal ties to the region’s sometimes-severe weather, she electrified the audience. A year afterward she entered the studio with a three-piece horn section comprising saxophonists Amalie Dahl (also on flute), Martin Myhre Olsen, and Mona Krogstad, together with keyboardist Marte Eberson, bassist Trond Frønes, and drummer Ivor Loe Bjørnstad. Drawing on Nordheim’s score and the memory of that performance, she produced her most restrained and lyrical statement to date, Tempest Revisited.
Born in Ålesund, Møre og Romsdal, Norway in 1982, Thomassen picked up the guitar at age ten on her mother’s nylon-string instrument. Although she lacked formal musical schooling, her father’s sizable jazz and rock & roll collection served as her training ground. While still in high school she rendered a biography of Jimi Hendrix into Norwegian for a class assignment, absorbing not only his pioneering recordings but also the guitar approaches of Jimmy Page, Sonny Sharrock, Fred Frith, Pete Cosey, John McLaughlin, and Carlos Santana.
Prior to assembling her trio she worked with a broad range of musicians and groups that included the Bronco Busters, Sweet Potatoes, Vom, and an earlier incarnation of the Mollestad Trio.
Her recording debut occurred as a guest on the Cumshots’ fourth album, A Life Less Necessary, issued in 2009 by the environmental-activist duo Kristopher Schau and Ole Petter Andreassen. That same year she also concentrated on improvisation and jazz performance, receiving the Jazztalentprisen for Young Jazz Talent of the Year at the Molde International Jazz Festival in Norway, after which she immediately formed the Hedwig Mollestad Trio with Brekken and Bjørnstad.
In 2010 she appeared as guest soloist on Jarle Bernhoft’s cassette-only release 1:Man 2:Band. Her trio’s first album, Shoot!, surfaced on Rune Grammofon in 2011 and earned widespread praise for its vigorous fusion of hard rock, metal, and free jazz. Later that year she served as soloist on the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra’s Migrations, the Jon Eberson Group’s The Coarse Sand & The Names We Wrote, and Hilde Marie Kjersem’s Let’s Let Go.
During 2012 Mollestad, handling both guitar and Hammond B-3, joined Andreassen’s expansive, rotating progressive supergroup El Doom & The Born Electric, whose lineup also comprised Ståle Storløkken, Eberson, brothers Håvard and Brynjar Takle Ohr on drums and guitar, bassist Nikolai Hængsle Eilertsen, and Mikael Lindquist on Mellotron; the ensemble delivered a self-titled album on Rune Grammofon, and her trio performed at Steinkjerfestivalen that summer.
The Hedwig Mollestad Trio’s second recording, All of Them Witches, appeared in 2013 to broad acclaim within jazz, avant-garde, and indie-rock communities. She also recorded the studio album Ekko with the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra that year and joined them for live appearances. In June 2014 the HM3 released its third album, Enfant Terrible; the group’s sound continued to develop through live work as Mollestad and her bandmates leaned further into improvisation and free jazz while retaining their rock foundation. In 2016 Rune Grammofon issued both the double-length Evil in Oslo and the studio set Black Stabat Mater. Following those releases the trio’s emphasis shifted once more toward avant-jazz even as they supported Black Sabbath and guitarist John McLaughlin at festivals throughout Europe. In 2018 the trio returned with Smells Funny on Rune Grammofon, a fresh examination of hard rock that highlighted Mollestad’s emerging command of distinctive riffs and intense, unruly, emotionally charged solos.
For 2020’s Ekhidna, Mollestad moved beyond her longtime trio for the first time, gathering a quintet of Norwegian-scene colleagues that included Elephant9 drummer Torstein Lofthus, Portuguese trumpeter Susana Santos Silva, jazz keyboardists Marte Eberson and Erlend Slettevoll, and percussionist Ole Mofjell. The resulting expansive sound, which appeared to fuse the aesthetics of Black Sabbath with John McLaughlin’s early fusion style, placed on year-end lists worldwide. Nine months later she reconvened with her trio for 2021’s Ding Dong. You’re Dead., which explored a contrasting dynamic: alongside exclusively riff-heavy jazz fusion, Mollestad presented more nuanced originals possessing greater dynamic range. Brekken supplemented her signature electric bass with acoustic bass guitar and upright, while drummer Bjørnstad displayed his more refined jazz technique alongside his driving rock drumming.
In November Mollestad released Tempest Revisited, her third project in eighteen months. The studio recording traces its origins to 1998, when her label Rune Grammofon, then newly founded, issued Electric, the collected electronic works of Norwegian composer Arne Nordheim. That year excerpts from Nordheim’s best-known composition The Tempest were selected for the opening of Parken, a new arts-and-culture venue in Mollestad’s birthplace Ålesund. In 2018, marking the twentieth anniversary of Electric, the label invited Mollestad to interpret the work; equally inspired by the score and her personal ties to the region’s sometimes-severe weather, she electrified the audience. A year afterward she entered the studio with a three-piece horn section comprising saxophonists Amalie Dahl (also on flute), Martin Myhre Olsen, and Mona Krogstad, together with keyboardist Marte Eberson, bassist Trond Frønes, and drummer Ivor Loe Bjørnstad. Drawing on Nordheim’s score and the memory of that performance, she produced her most restrained and lyrical statement to date, Tempest Revisited.
Albums
Singles
