This release delivers the thrill of discovery when Jakob Davidsen (b. 1969) and company take the listener away from safe, conventional paths into a striking genre-hopping adventure. It’s a sombre tale, based on selected texts of William Shakespeare, Ursula Andkjær Olsen and Ole Sarvig, but ones that Davidsen imbues with gentle intimacy and vibrant colours.

With the composer and pianist Jakob Davidsen as your travel guide, the listener on The World is Babel and Ivory is invited to experience the great in the small, the near in the far, man in cosmos.

Jakob Davidsen is wide-ranging as a musician and a composer. He came originally from the young Danish jazz environment of the 1990s, but early on defined himself as a composer and studied composition under such teachers as Bo Holten and Niels Marthinsen. He is neither avant-garde nor a traditionalist, balancing on his tightropes of a stringent awareness of form, melodic humour and sensitivity.

In this release, texts by William Shakespeare, Ursula Andkjær Olsen and Ole Sarvig are given a unique musical interpretation by Jakob Davidsens Kammerat Orkester and FIGURA Ensemble in a fused symbiosis.

All recordings on this album are world premiere recordings.