Mats Eilertsen

Mats Eilertsen, a jazz bassist and composer born in Trondheim, Norway, maintains an extensive recording career while leading multiple ensembles and contributing as a frequent session musician to projects such as the Alexi Tuomaril Trio and Håkon Kornstad Trio. Since issuing Turanga in 2004 he has released more than a dozen leader albums, among them SkyDive from 2011, the ECM dates Rubicon in 2016 and And Then Comes the Night in 2019, and Hymn for Hope in 2021; during 2024 he became a member of the experimental octet Hlaskontrabasoktet, comprising four double bassists and four vocalists, whose first recording, Kaleidoscapes, appeared that July.

He began formal studies of piano and bass in his native Trondheim before completing a jazz major at Trondheim Musikkonservatorium, where he co-founded the quintet Dingobats alongside saxophonist Eirik Hegdal, guitarist Thomas Dahl, and drummer Sverre Gjørvad. The group’s debut, The New Dingobats Generation, emerged in 1998; after establishing itself as a club favorite the ensemble produced two additional albums and dissolved in 2004. While still active with Dingobats, Eilertsen participated in Food from 2000 to 2004 alongside Thomas Strønen, Iain Ballamy, and Arve Henriksen, appearing on the quartet’s initial four albums, and performed with the Håkon Kornstad Trio, whose album Space Available earned a Kongsberg Jazz Award in 2002. He also supplied bass for guitarist Jacob Young’s ECM debut, Evening Falls, released in 2004.

Following Dingobats’ breakup he assembled the quartet Turanga featuring cellist Ernst Reijseger, saxophonist Fredrik Ljungkvist, and Strønen; their self-titled 2005 album is widely viewed as Eilertsen’s first solo statement, succeeded the next year by Flux with the same personnel. In 2008 he recorded on Young’s Sideways and joined Tord Gustavsen’s ensemble for Restored, Returned, another ECM release. Radio Yonder, his third album, appeared on Hubro—the jazz and improvised-music division of Norway’s Grappa Musikkforlag—in 2009, supported by saxophonist Tore Brunborg, drummer Olavi Louhivuori, and Dahl.

With pianist Harmen Fraanje and Strønen he issued Elegy in 2010, then reunited the Radio Yonder lineup plus Finnish pianist Alexi Tuomarila for SkyDive on Hubro in 2011. The following year he participated in Gustavsen’s ECM quartet album The Well and played on pianist Yelena Eckemoff’s trio date Forget-Me-Not, which featured Marilyn Mazur. In 2013 the Fraanje-Strønen trio released Sails Set; Eilertsen rejoined Gustavsen for Extended Circle in 2014, solidifying his ECM affiliation, and the next year appeared as double bassist on Mathias Eick’s Midwest and Nils Økland’s Kjølvatn.

Rubicon, his ECM debut as leader, arrived in August 2016; the album expanded a composition originally commissioned by the Vossajazz Festival and featured saxophonists Trygve Seim and Hegdal (the latter also on clarinets), Dahl, Rob Waring on marimba and vibraphone, Fraanje on piano and Fender Rhodes, and Louhivuori. In 2018 Eilertsen collaborated with guitarist Jo David Meyer Lysne on Meander, and the subsequent year his trio with Fraanje and Strønen made its ECM bow with And Then Comes the Night. Two further Hubro releases followed: the expansive Reveries and Revelations, on which he performed basses, drums, guitar, and keyboards with guests including Henriksen, Strønen, and Eivind Aarset, and, in 2020, the second album with Meyer Lysne, Kroksjø. The solo-bass project Solitude Central, recorded during the pandemic, appeared in 2021, as did Hymn for Hope, a quartet album tracing a loping trajectory through contemporary European jazz, improvisation, electric jazz, and post-bop. In 2023 he worked with trumpeter Hildegunn Øiseth and keyboardist Bugge Wesseltoft on Suite for Gaia. A longstanding member of the Alexi Tuomarila Trio since 2013, he participated in the 2024 release Departing the Wasteland; concurrently he joined Hlaskontrabasoktet, whose debut Kaleidoscapes was issued that July by ArkivMusic.