Håkon Kornstad is a Norwegian jazz saxophonist and classically trained opera singer known as “The Tenor who plays Tenor”.
Kornstad has built a career around combining two seemingly disparate genres into one expressive and creative sound.
He started playing the saxophone at a young age, getting into jazz from his parents' record collection and would go on to study at the music conservatory in Trondheim, Norway. Kornstad played with various trios and bands, while developing a sense of free improvisation, before he became interested in solo performance using an electronic looping machine to stack sounds and create harmonies by himself.
A 2009 trip to New York City would introduce him to the world renowned Metropolitan Opera on a chance invitation from a friend. After falling in love with the idiom and developing his own desire to sing operatically, Kornstad became the oldest student to enroll in the Oslo Academy of Opera at age 32.
Since then, Kornstad has been refining his one man show of solo saxophone improvisations and expressive opera numbers.
He’ll be performing three nights at Mondavi's Vanderhoef Studio Theatre April 23rd-25th. Excellence in Jazz host Avery Jeffry sat down with Kornstad to discuss his unlikely musical journey and his unique talents.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity
On getting into jazz
When I got the saxophone, I thought I had to check them [parent’s records] out and there was one of the bossa nova albums with Stan Getz. I also remember my dad had some Coltrane albums, but I thought they were a little bit too advanced for me. So I guess I started digging along to the vinyl with Stan Getz and Charlie Bird, and trying to mimic the sound and get a jazz sound on my saxophone.
On discovering opera in New York City
I had never been to an opera before and very rarely to classical concerts. So for me, it was really a revelation to get that in this big room with those great singers. And what happened after, you know, you start looking for things that you didn't look for before. Just a couple of weeks later, I met this soprano at a party and we decided to do something together. I brought the saxophone to her apartment and we tried to have me play a little bit around her singing. Suddenly I felt a real urge to sing and I told her. She had recently met a new teacher so she called her right away and I got to speak to this wonderful soprano on the upper west side, Pamela. So it started in New York and then I spent a lot of time in lines for cheap opera tickets at the Met. It was like a new world that opened up to me there.
On people’s reactions to his singing
I can remember many moments where I just look at people's faces and they are like,” oh.” I see their expressions, which is really fun for me to watch. It's fun to have this kind of secret that I sort of play a couple of songs on the saxophone and then burst into singing. I enjoy myself more and more while singing now because in the beginning it was so new to me. I knew I had a voice in there and I knew I could still do something that would be OK for a concert, but I wasn't enjoying it as much as I am now because it's been 10, 15 years and I've been doing it on all my concerts. Now I really can start to let it flow a little bit more and that's a great feeling.
On combining improvisation with the tradition of opera
People don't dare to sort of edit in music, but the music is getting kind of old and I feel that we can use it to suit our needs if we do it with respect. I sort of use improvisation as a glue in a way to kind of prolong the moments that I love about this classical music, because you get into an opera and you sit for three, four hours and then there's this aria you love and it lasts for three minutes. So why not try to prolong that moment? If you really love it, then maybe you can do that by creating some new parts or improvising something. That's what I use my jazz skills or improvisational skills for, I just like to improvise and spontaneously compose things.
On how he got into looping
It came along when I was playing with this electronic band when I had like this soundcheck with my looper. I only used the looper because I wanted to be part of the chords and ambient sounds of that band, not just like a soloist that you usually are when you play the saxophone. But then on the sound check, I heard it and thought, Ok, this maybe has the sort of the quality of a show on its own. We did a concert in Montreal where the drummer's Macintosh actually failed so we had to restart it and we had to do something because there were like a couple thousand people at an outdoor stage. So I just started looping, you know, doing something. And the response that I got from that sort of made me rest assured that I could do that. Especially when I sing, it's nice to have something to sing on top of.
On connecting with the audience
I'm more just into making something that is beautiful and that's in the moment and also in the room that I'm playing in. A lot of people tell me that they are on this beautiful journey with the music, that they sort of close their eyes and are taken to many different parts of the world. And one of the best responses, I guess, is that it's really so surprising in a way.
