Drums | 1943–2020

Christensen described his approach to time not as a grid but as a wave, something that could accommodate ebb and flow without losing its internal logic, and the ECM recordings he made across five decades bear that out in practice. He grew up in Oslo, won the Norwegian Jazz Amateur Competition at seventeen, and was encouraged by Dexter Gordon during an early encounter to trust his own instincts rather than imitate American drummers. By the mid-1960s he was working regularly with George Russell and with the group of Norwegian players, including Garbarek, Terje Rypdal, and Arild Andersen, who would announce themselves on "Afric Pepperbird" (ECM, 1970), one of the label's earliest releases. The dry ping of his 22-inch Istanbul K ride cymbal became a recognisable signature of the ECM sound across the recordings that followed. His most widely heard work from this period comes through the Garbarek-Bobo Stenson Quartet, particularly "Witchi-Tai-To" (ECM, 1974), and Keith Jarrett's Belonging Quartet, documented on "Belonging" (ECM, 1974) and "My Song" (ECM, 1977). He went on to appear on records by Ralph Towner, Enrico Rava, Charles Lloyd, and Anouar Brahem among many others, accumulating roughly seventy ECM credits before his death in Oslo in February 2020.