Name: Bruno Råberg
Nationality: Swedish  
Occupation: Bassist, composer, music professor
Current release: Bruno Råberg's Look Inside is out via Orbis.
Formative event: There are so many formative events. I’ll mention one. When I was 19, I got to go to a jazz festival in Kongsberg, Norway. It was a double bill with Tete Montoliu Trio featuring Danish bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted-Pedersen. The second half was Art Ensemble of Chicago. Need I say more?

If you enjoyed this interview with Bruno Råberg and would like to know more about his music and current live dates, visit his official homepage. He is also on Instagram, and Facebook.



When did you first start getting interested in musical improvisation?  

I remember improvising freely at the piano at around age 8 or 9 before I knew that there was a word for what I was doing.

Which artists, approaches, albums or performances involving prominent use of improvisation captured your imagination in the beginning?

As I grew up in Sweden I would hear blues artists on the radio and loved it. When I was a teen it would be groups and artists like Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Chicago, Blood Sweat & Tears, and The Doors, who all had extensive sections of improvised soloing.

The pop band I was in at that time started to incorporate these long jam sections. Then, of course, I got into jazz listening to Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock.

Focusing on improvisation can be an incisive transition. Aside from musical considerations, there can also be personal motivations for looking for alternatives. Was this the case for you, and if so, in which way?

I think I was born to improvise. It’s always been my most natural way to express myself. I didn’t take any formal music lessons until age 16 when I started playing the acoustic bass.

In a way the transition for me was to be able to read music which at the time I found very hard, since I trusted my ear more than my eyes.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to improvisation? Do you see yourself as part of a tradition or historic lineage?

The idea is really self-expression and yes, I do see myself, humbly so, as part of the jazz tradition, having studied the music extensively both by transcribing and listening to the music.

What was your own learning curve / creative development like when it comes to improvisation - what were challenges and breakthroughs?

I started playing the blues both on guitar and electric bass. The transition from using mainly the blues scale to being able to outline more intricate harmonic progressions took a long time.

Tell me about your instrument and/or tools, please. How would you describe the relationship with it? What are its most important qualities and how do they influence the musical results and your own performance?  

My main instrument is the bass and I’ve always loved the way it underpins and supports the rest of the group while still being a melodic instrument.

It really has three roles in a jazz group. Together with the drums it is the foundation of the rhythm, it underpins the harmony and form, and it’s also a melodic instrument.

For composition I use the piano in combination with voice and the bass.

Can you talk about a work, event or performance in your career that's particularly dear to you? Why does it feel special to you? When, why and how did you start working on it, what were some of the motivations and ideas behind it?

Each of my recordings is very special to me in that it really represents a certain period in my musical life, much like a milestone.

There is a certain component of being able to move on after having released an album. I guess you feel like a certain era in your musical life has been documented and now you can move on from there, creating new material based on it.

How do you feel your sense of identity influences your collaborations? Do you feel as though you are able to express yourself more fully in solo mode or, conversely, through the interaction with other musicians? Are you “gaining” or “sacrificing” something in a collaboration?

I think both situations bring out different things.

I believe that when playing with people you end up playing things you otherwise never would have been able to play, whereas when you play by yourself you tend to stay a bit more in your comfort zone and you might also end up playing material that there would no be room for in a group setting.

When you're improvising, does it actually feel like you're inventing something on the spot – or are you inventively re-arranging patterns from preparations, practise or previous performances?

A combination, really, but I think we improvising musicians reuse materials more than we think.

Maybe an 80-20 ratio with 80 being the reuse of materials we already know.

To you, are there rules in improvisation? If so, what kind of rules are these?

Improvisation, both in individual solos over a song structure or as a free group improvisation, is really “real-time composition” as I see it. So the same rules apply as in any other kind of composition.

In a live situation, decisions between creatives often work without words. How does this process work – and how does it change your performance compared to a solo performance?

The decisions that are made between musicians not using words are mostly based on background knowledge that takes years of listening, playing and practicing to accumulate. Not that different from a solo performance, except when improvising solo you don’t have to listen and react what’s going on around you.

There are many descriptions of the ideal state of mind for being creative. What is it like for you?

I think having too many preconceived ideas and expectations can really create obstacles rather than helping.

I’ve had many experiences where I’ve come to a gig with no expectations and it ended up being really good.

In which way is it different between your solo work and collaborations?

For my solo bass recording there wasn’t much difference. When I first started to record I was trying way too hard and was “endgaining,” which is an Alexander Technique concept meaning that you pay too much attention to the final project and end up not being “in-the-now.”

I had the luxury of recording this in my home studio, so several times I would just start playing and recording without the intention of it being “the take,” and I remember ending up using some of those takes not because they were “perfect” but for the feeling they created.

How do you see the relationship between sound, space and performance and what are some of your strategies and approaches of working with them?

It is important to be able to adjust to the space that you’re playing in and see the room as being part of your instrument.

In a way, improvisations remind us of the transitory nature of life. What, do you feel, can music and improvisation express and reveal about life and death?

Wow, quite a question! Improvisation happens in the now and you can’t really go back and change anything. This really brings you into the present which is a place where we all like to be, ultimately.

I think the same can happen when we’re watching or engaging in artwork, movies, interesting conversations, dance, basically anything that’s captivating. It makes us feel alive.