Jan Garbarek: His Setups

To get into context, put on in the background the album Officium by Jan Garbarek and the Hilliard Ensemble, recorded for ECM in 1993. This album will transport you to the mysterious and tenebrous sonority of the Nordic countries.

As Dave Liebman recounts in his autobiography What it is, when he traveled around Northern Europe in the mid-1960s, he was surprised to find a 100% endemic stream of improvised music there, and Jan Garbarek was undoubtedly part of that group. Born in 1944 near Oslo, Garbarek developed a personal style at a very early age. Although his setups contributed only a small part, we would like to give you some hints about them.

The 60's: The Early Years

In the early 60's, many American musicians included Norway in their European tours. Watch this video from 1963 how Jan, as a teenager, plays with a very "Dexter Gordon" style in both phrasing and sound: See video.

We can confirm that he used a Buffet Super Dynaction tenor saxophone (competitor of the Selmer Mark VI at the time) with a Berg Larsen metal mouthpiece with a small tip openning, approximately 0.85, small chamber. He has always played with that opening throughout his career.

Influence of John Coltrane

Another of his great references was John Coltrane. Inspired by the publication of My Favourite Things, Garbarek looked for a soprano in the stores in Stockholm. He found a curved saxophone from the Santoni brand, which had been in the shop window for several years. Although it was not a great instrument, he was captivated by its openness and timbre, despite having a tuning that was not too easy to control. The mouthpiece was also a Berg Larsen ebonite, bought new in 1969, with a tip opeening 6. 

Collaborations with Keith Jarrett

At that time, Keith Jarrett began to overlap his mythical American quartet (Dewey Redman, Charley Haden, Paul Motian) with the European quartet with Garbarek, Danielsson and Christensen, leaving incredible music recorded in albums like Belonging or My Song. We recommend you to listen to "Spiral Dance" while reading on. 

Setups over the years. Selmer and Yamaha

Jan Garbarek is listed as a Selmer artist on his website. We know that he has played most of his career on an early series Mark VI tenor saxophone, specifically a 58xxx from 1955. In the 1980s, he became famous for playing the tenor saxophone with a straight neck, similar to that of an alto, but longer, which, while less comfortable, would offer greater projection with less resistance. He had a little run-in with Yamaha, who at Garbarek's request apparently built him that genuine straight tudel.

Collaborations with the Hilliard Ensemble. Rampone & Cazzani

Let's go back to the beginning, Hilliard Ensemble was an English a cappella quartet of male voices, with which Jan Garbareck collaborated on several occasions, and this brings us to a nice curiosity: Mr Garbarek always played with them the soprano only, it is assumed that, by instrumental tessitura, and the tenor register (both in voice and tenor sax) should be oversaturated. Therefore, he needed a second soprano (in addition to his Santoni curved soprano) in case it was damaged on tour, and he started to investigate how to get another one like it to carry a backup, but unfortunately after returning to the store where he bought the Santoni, he found neither the brand nor the saxophone. All the clues led him to show up there in 2013 at Rampone & Cazzani, a well-known Italian manufacturer that we also introduced in a previous post. He thought that there could be the soul of his Santoni in the same area where it was manufactured, and Rampone could be similar. It was then that he fell in love with this family and got two curved sopranos, a DUE Voci bronze, and a nickel silver. Nowadays he still plays with the DUE Voci!

Mouthpieces and Reeds. Theo Wanne and Ted Klum

In recent years, also Ted Klum or Theo Wanne have provided him with mouthpieces for both tenor and soprano. There by 2014 he was playing a long season with Ted Klum's London Model (inspired by Berg Larsen, and always in openings between 6 and 7).

On soprano he played with Theo Wanne's GAIA model, until he recently succumbed to the AMBIKA model, the darkest of the catalogue.

Now on tenor he alternates between two Theo Wanne models, Gaia 4 and the recent Brahma, in openings 6* and 7*. Jan's favorite reeds have always been Rico Royal 3 and Vandoren ZZ 2.5 or 3.

We leave you ready to experiment with the combinations!