Cornelia Nilsson – Where Do You Go?

Here’s a totally exciting album by a young Swedish drummer recording under her own name for the first time.

She has chosen to perform in two trios, one with piano on six tracks and the other with saxophone on four others, and in both cases her drumming is totally relevant, whether she officiates with sticks or brushes.

Her way of playing is deeply rooted in tradition – if only because she favors toms over cymbals – but at the same time totally modern. The repertoire is equally eclectic, featuring themes by Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk and Ornette Coleman, as well as two standards and five perfectly convincing personal compositions.

The saxophone trio features the excellent Hungarian tenor Gabor Bolla (based in Copenhagen, like Cornelia Nilsson), with whom she is accustomed to playing, and who favors fast tempos where his drive works wonders, and which the leader supports with remarkable tonicity. For the other trio, American pianist Aaron Parks was chosen, and while his playing sounds more traditional than on his own recordings with his band Little Big or his trio with Ben Street and Billy Hart, it’s no less interesting. We hear an eclectic musician who knows how to adapt to the universe of his two Scandinavian companions, and Swedish bassist Daniel Frank, also based in Copenhagen, completes the two formations to which he provides a very solid foundation.

A totally successful first opus, then, from a drummer who, in accompaniment as well as in the course of a few brief, highly successful solos, asserts herself as an instrumentalist and composer to be reckoned with.