Arve Henriksen & Harmen Fraanje
are at the helm of the contemporary improvised scene on their respective instruments and Touch of Time, the duo’s debut, is exemplary of their uncanny sensibility for each other’s timbre, phrasing and melodic approach. A striking musical rapport between the Norwegian trumpeter and Dutch pianist is palpable throughout these quietly lyrical investigations. In both freely improvised forms and carefully wrought themes, their instruments connect gracefully, picking up and finishing each other’s sentences.

Initiated in light of ECM’s 50th anniversary celebrations at the 2019 Transition Festival in Utrecht, Netherlands, where the duo first met and performed a captivating improvised set, the collaboration between Harmen and Arve has since morphed into a fruitful partnership, where the players are able to riff off each other’s ideas seamlessly and in-the-moment. Harmen: “With Arve, from the beginning it felt so easy to find each other in the music, to follow the flow, to feel the direction of the melody, and to sense the emerging harmonies. After that very first concert we immediately realized we should continue performing together – and a new duo was born.”

Where that first occasion was freely improvised, on Touch of Time the duo also introduces prepared melodies and progressions into the mix, as extended vehicles for the musicians’ soft-spoken interplay. “Redream”, “What All This Is” and the title track are such frameworks – penned by Harmen – and point to the contemplative, concentrated character of the album, revealing both chorale-like cadences and stream-of-consciousness melodic development.

Arve and Harmen: “We consider Touch of Time to be exactly where we meet in music. Although there are solid structures within these pieces, we form the material very freely, as a holistic process, rather than a static approach borne from preconception.” The music was shaped together with Manfred Eicher, who produced the album, recorded at the Auditorio Stelio Molo in Lugano in early 2023.

Harmen Fraanje
is a pianist, composer and educator from the Netherlands.

He leads and co-leads several projects like his solo project, trio Reijseger Fraanje Sylla, a duo with Norwegian trumpet player Arve Henriksen, a quartet with Sanem Kalfa, Clemens van der Feen and Martijn Vink, a trio with Finnish musicians Aino Peltomaa on voice and Mikko Perkola on viola da gamba and effects, and a quartet with Magic Malik, Brice Soniano and Toma Gouband. These groups mostly perform original works with a lot of space for improvisation.

Harmen is also very active as a sideman in various projects in the European jazz scene, like the Mats Eilertsen Trio, Eric Vloeimans’ Fugimundi trio with Anton Goudsmit, and Michael Moore’s Fragile Quartet. With these projects he frequently performs at festivals and concert venues throughout the world. Recordings of the projects he’s involved in have been released by renowned record labels like ECM, Winter & Winter, Outhere Music, Hubro Music, Challenge Jazz…

Harmen collaborated with the likes of Ambrose Akinmusire, Mark Turner, Kenny Wheeler, Arve Henriksen, Thomas Morgan, Tony Malaby, Han Bennink, Ernst Reijseger, Trygve Seim, Jesse van Ruller, Magic Malik, Nelson Veras, Theo Bleckmann, Ben Monder, Enrico Rava, Werner Herzog, Trio Mediaeval, Hein van de Geyn, Perico Sambeat, Igor Roma, Louis Moholo, Ferenc Kovács, Rudi Mahall, Cristina Branco.

Harmen is chairman of the Jazz Piano Faculty at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam / University of the Arts Amsterdam. He is also frequently invited to give workshops and masterclasses at other European conservatories.

According to the internationally acclaimed website AllAboutJazz “Harmen Fraanje is emerging as one of the most impressive young European pianists of the past decade.”

Arve Henriksen
was born in Stranda, Norway in 1968 and began playing and recording internationally in 1989. He first recorded for ECM with Christian Wallumrød trio on No Birch (1998) and has since regularly appeared on the label as both sideman and leader, including on albums by Tigran Hamsyan, Jon Balke, Trygve Seim, Arild Andersen, Sinikka Langeland and Frode Hailti. Down Beat called his ECM leader-date Cartography (2010) “ethereal ambient music created with a painterly touch and marked by a fine melodic sensibility”. Most recently, Henriksen could be heard alongside Jakob Bro and Jorge Rossy on Uma Elmo (2022).