Lars Bagge

While his professional name sounds like a hotel clerk describing massive suitcases in pigeon English, this Swedish musician's full name of Eric Lars Otto Bagge practically requires large baggage just to haul it around. Lars Bagge would surely need quite a few bags of various sizes if he took all the instruments he plays to recording sessions, and he has been involved in more than 75 such events in the jazz genre alone since 1954. A piano -- at which he can create lyrical spaces similar to <a href="spotify:artist:4jXfFzeP66Zy67HM2mvIIF">Bill Evans</a>, with appropriate spoonfuls of Swedish mysticism -- would be awaiting him at the studio, but he is also quite likely to show up hauling a cello, synthesizer, flugelhorn, or even a bassoon. He began his musical life with one of the smallest of cases, a trumpet, and was playing in the school band at the age of 13. Bagge debuted professionally as a pianist in 1951, at 16 -- impressively young, although not as mind-boggling as the misprint in <a href="spotify:artist:18JiHWhqvWBYpHQ44jMaSG">Leonard Feather</a>'s Encyclopedia of Jazz, which has the tyke on-stage grooving on piano at the age of six.

An association with saxophonist <a href="spotify:artist:4gquwMHteaMQ0ZQOMj9CsI">Lars Gullin</a> began in the mid-'50s; the two guys named Lars would grow musically together in a variety of settings, several of which can be sampled on the superb Dragon retrospective entitled Stockholm Street: 1959-1960, Vol. 4. Bagge crossed over the water to play with the Danish Ib Glindeman, giving him a different purpose for visiting Copenhagen then most Swedes, who go there just to buy more potent beer. For several years beginning in 1956, Bagge was employed as an onboard pianist on the ship Stockholm, resulting in several trips to New York City, where he roamed the streets checking out jazz clubs.

His versatility as a musician also led to many involvements outside of improvised music. He was a member of the Carl-Henrik Norin Orchestra until the end of the '50s, while simultaneously working as bassoonist in the Gavle Symphony Orchestra, the latter job requiring lengthy excursions north to a city that reeks of coffee night and day due to the presence of nearby bean-processing plants. Since the '60s, Bagge began passing his knowledge along to students, working as a music teacher based out of the town of Katrineholm. His musical activity has touched just about every aspect of Swedish cultural life, from backing singers such as <a href="spotify:artist:7mvvG63CNSY93JWAJ37rnD">Monica Zetterlund</a> to recording special musical arrangements for the Swedish-language release of Walt Disney's Bambi. ~ Eugene Chadbourne, Rovi