A Nordic Night in Leeds

A venue new to me in Leeds is Seven, up on the Har­rog­ate Road in Chapel Aller­ton — quite a nice space, set out this time in a mix­ture of raked seats and café style tables at the front. The attrac­tion was the Chris­tian Wal­lum­rod Ensemble in acous­tic mode — him on piano , Nils Okland on Hard­anger fiddle and viola d’amore, Arve Hen­rikson on Trum­pet, and Per Oddvar Johansen on per­cus­sion. (The last, by the way, is a blond giant of a man — one can ima­gine him storm­ing up the beach at Lindis­farne wav­ing a broadsword, ter­ri­fy­ing monks — apo­lo­gies for ste­reo­typ­ing). A lot of what they do is quite del­ic­ate and was just right for a small venue. They make some lovely sounds — some­times quite hyp­notic, build­ing up a piece slowly and care­fully. I like the Norse expans­ive­ness of it all. 3 long pieces in each set, and a short encore. A real delight.