ØKSEJazz at MUNCH
ØKSE is an international all-star experimental jazz band consisting of NYC-based drummer Savannah Harris, Danish saxophonist Mette Rasmussen, Haitian electronic musician Val Jeanty, and Swede Petter Eldh on bass, synths and sampler.
Although each one is an established solo artist, with ØKSE they collectively mine new ground, pushing and pulling hiphop and free jazz into electrifying new shapes. Their recent album ØKSE (2024, Backwoodz Studioz) featured guest vocals from billy woods, E L U C I D, maasai and Cavalier.
ØKSE means axe in Danish. They chose the name because of all its connotations, including one of humankind's oldest tools. Axe is also Ashe – the West African Yoruba life-force that runs through all things, living and inanimate. Ashe is a current or flow, a groove that initiates can channel so that it sweeps them along their road in life. These are the raw and fluid energies that flow through ØKSE, and which make their live performances so spectacular.
Savannah Harris – drums
Mette Rasmussen – saxophone
Val Jeanty – electronics
Petter Eldh – bass, synth, sampler
Peter Margasak in The Wire, on ØKSE:
‘... .the real pleasure comes from the instrumentalists, who’ve forged a dense, sound world as adaptable as it is ass-shaking.’
Joseph Sannicandro in A Closer Listen:
‘ØKSE’s appeal remains the interplay between the musicians, their ability to improvise without losing the hypnotic head-nodding groove that makes hiphop what it is without ever sounding like anything less than jazz musicians”.
Jazz at MUNCH is our concert series with roots going back to Munch Museum in the 1960s. Today the series is programmed in collaboration with Oslo Jazz Festival.
