Tenor and Soprano Saxophone | b. 1947

Garbarek's saxophone tone is one of the most immediately identifiable in post-1960 jazz: crystalline, sustained, built around silence as much as sound, and carrying a quality that seems inseparable from the Norwegian landscape he grew up in without being reducible to it. He came to jazz in the early 1960s, spent formative years working with American composer George Russell during Russell's extended Scandinavian period, and made his ECM debut with "Afric Pepperbird" (1970), a free-leaning quartet record with Terje Rypdal, Arild Andersen, and Jon Christensen that established his approach fully formed. His mid-1970s work as both leader and sideman produced the most collected records in his catalogue: "Witchi-Tai-To" (ECM, 1974) with the Bobo Stenson Quartet, and "Belonging" (ECM, 1974) and "My Song" (ECM, 1977) with Keith Jarrett's European quartet, where his sound found an international audience. The 1980s brought new collaborators in Eberhard Weber, Bill Frisell, and Nana Vasconcelos, and a gradual movement toward world music and ambient territory that culminated in "Officium" (ECM, 1994), his meeting with the Hilliard Ensemble and ECM's best-selling record.