"A five piece ensemble with three basses may sound like the weirdest thing ever, but listening to this masterwork you'll hear a complete lesson in bass artistry." The Double Bassist:
NHOP
Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen was described by Oscar P [+]"A five piece ensemble with three basses may sound like the weirdest thing ever, but listening to this masterwork you'll hear a complete lesson in bass artistry." The Double Bassist:
NHOP
Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen was described by Oscar Peterson as "arguably the most inventive bassist in jazz" Pedersen, who was customarily referred to as "NHOP", was among the most frequently recorded jazz musicians in history, having taken part in more than 400 albums. There was hardly a major international name with whom he had not played during the last 40 years. Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen, the son of a church organist, was born at Osted, Denmark, on May 27 1946. He began piano lessons at the age of seven, and at 13, when he was tall enough, took up the double bass in order to play in his family band. He made such rapid progress that, within two years, he was playing at the Montmartre Jazzhus, Copenhagen's leading jazz club. He became a member of the resident band, a trio which accompanied the parade of star soloists who passed through the club. These included the saxophonists Ben Webster, Sonny Rollins, Stan Getz and Dexter Gordon, trumpeters Chet Baker and Art Farmer, multi-instrumentalist Roland Kirk and the pianist Bill Evans. At the age of 17 he was invited to join the Count Basie orchestra, but was forced to decline, mainly on account of his youth but also because he wanted to complete his studies. Pederson's instinctive grasp of the jazz idiom allowed him to fit in with a remarkable variety of styles, including such avant garde artists as Archie Shepp and Albert Ayler. However, it was in the broad mainstream of jazz that he felt most at home. Between 1964 and 1982, and occasionally thereafter, he was a member of the Danish Radio Big Band, one of the finest jazz orchestras in Europe. He subsequently recorded an album, Ambiance (1993), which featured him accompanied by this band, in which his extraordinary technique is heard to full advantage. He had developed a method of playing pizzicato using all four fingers of the right hand, enabling him to execute very high-speed passages without sacrificing either tone or definition During the early 1970s, Pedersen joined the American pianist Kenny Drew, then resident in Scandinavia, to perform duets at Eur
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