Da Vinci Classics

Anders Lønne Grønseth: Tidskapsel

Anders Lønne Grønseth, Audun Ellingsen, Einar Scheving, Espen Berg, Hayden Powell, Multiverse, Sidsel Walstad

C012652 CdsBass Clarinet, Double-Bass, Drums, Harp, Piano, Saxophone, Trumpet

Physical Release: 4 December 2026
Digital Release: 4 December 2026

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ArtistsAnders Lønne Grønseth, Audun Ellingsen, Einar Scheving, Espen Berg, Hayden Powell, Multiverse, Sidsel WalstadBiographies

Anders Lønne Grønseth is a Norwegian saxophonist, reed player and composer from Oslo. He studied at the Norwegian Academy of Music and completed a master’s degree at the University of Gothenburg. Rooted in jazz, his work also draws on contemporary classical composition, Indian music and Middle Eastern maqam traditions. His projects include Sphinx, the Mini Macro Ensemble and Multiverse. He plays saxophones and bass clarinet and develops compositions around improvisation and ensemble interaction.

Audun Ellingsen is a Norwegian jazz bassist from Ørsta. He studied jazz at Leeds College of Music before establishing his professional base in Oslo. His activities include the ensembles Sphinx and Audun Automat, alongside collaborations with Frøy Aagre and other jazz musicians. His work ranges across ensemble performance, improvisation and recording. He is the bassist in Anders Lønne Grønseth’s Multiverse.

Einar Scheving is an Icelandic drummer and composer from Reykjavík. He began performing professionally in his teens and completed bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Miami. His career encompasses numerous recordings and collaborations across the Icelandic music scene. His albums Cycles and Land míns föður received Icelandic Music Awards. He plays drums and percussion with Anders Lønne Grønseth’s Multiverse.

Espen Berg is a Norwegian pianist and composer whose activities encompass solo improvisation, trio performance and ensemble collaborations. He has toured internationally since 2003, with recordings under his own name and with the Espen Berg Trio. He became a Steinway Artist in 2023 and teaches at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. He is the pianist in Anders Lønne Grønseth’s Multiverse.

Hayden Powell is a trumpeter and composer based in Oslo. Born in England and raised in Norway, he studied jazz at NTNU in Trondheim and completed a master’s degree at the Norwegian Academy of Music. His activities combine freelance performance, bandleading, composing, arranging and teaching. He plays trumpet in Anders Lønne Grønseth’s Multiverse.

Multiverse is an ensemble led by Norwegian saxophonist and composer Anders Lønne Grønseth. Its music brings composed structures into dialogue with improvisation and spontaneous ensemble interaction. The group includes trumpeter Hayden Powell, pianist Espen Berg, bassist Audun Ellingsen and drummer Einar Scheving. The Da Vinci recording also features harpist Sidsel Walstad, extending the ensemble’s instrumental palette.

Sidsel Walstad is a Norwegian harpist whose work crosses classical, jazz and other musical genres. She studied in Oslo, Indiana and Copenhagen and has held principal harp positions with the Norwegian National Opera Orchestra and the Norwegian Radio Orchestra. Alongside chamber and orchestral performance, she develops projects with electric harp. Her collaborations explore a broad range of sounds and performing contexts.

ComposersAnders Lønne GrønsethBiographies

Album notes

This album is about time. The first note is an instant; the next creates a chain held together only by memory, weaving a map of textures, shapes, directions, possibilities. That’s music or a tree drawing circles in its veins. Time runs beneath every melody, every rhythm, every silence: the pulse beneath the pulse. We live by it, measure our days with it, and lay our futures upon it. Time is an endless resource, handed out in portions. It moves through science, philosophy and culture; cyclic, linear, relative… or all at…

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Time runs beneath every melody, every rhythm, every silence: the pulse beneath the pulse. We live by it, measure our days with it, and lay our futures upon it. Time is an endless resource, handed out in portions. It moves through science, philosophy and culture; cyclic, linear, relative… or all at once.

Can you explain time? Can you hold it? Music doesn’t image time, it is time, and cannot breathe without it.

A time capsule is made to keep hold: to seal the present, keep it safe for the future, reach toward eternity. But no capsule can stop the moment. Its content remains, but not how you see it: It tells a different story now. Time itself preserves nothing. The past survives only as memory; an interpretation. Break the seal, and the stillness is gone; its contents spill into the current, the present colliding with what has been. Inside the capsule, time holds its breath.

Come inside. Here, time is not what you know, it does not spill and cannot be wasted.

Music is time. It tells its stories at its own pace: every turn of colour, nuance, motion, tendency or shift in temperament and direction. It offers no conclusions. A forward step may be a return, the beginning might be an ending or a passing point toward the unknown.

The meaning you find will be your own, shaping the music with your own perspective. It will never be heard the same way twice. Only here, hidden and unheard, is it universal.

The tree keeps a map of time, hidden to the world until its time has passed.

While the compositions on Tidskapsel dwell on the mystery and inevitability of time, the heart of Multiverse's artistic expression lies in the concept of "structured freedom": Through intuitive interaction, the group integrates improvisation and compositional intent to develop musical form in real-time. Each member brings a distinct perspective, essential to the collective expression: a multiverse of personalities connected through interplay and musical conversation.

In improvised music, performance unfolds as a continuous stream of individual choices. Most of these occur at a near-subconscious level, guided by musical intuition – an accumulation of ability, experience, knowledge and imagination. Context and surroundings play a role in any choice made, and the strongest influence will come from fellow musicians: A single choice can reshape the direction of the music, as each impulse is absorbed, answered and transformed by the group. In this way, the ensemble becomes a multiverse of parallel ideas – unfolding, connecting and uniting through interaction.

Since its formation, Multiverse has explored the trademark tonal model of Bitonal Scales, developed by Anders Lønne Grønseth and refined through his projects for over a decade. The system draws on elements from musical traditions that have shaped his musical identity: the modal approach to jazz harmony, Indian raga, the Maqam tradition of the Middle East, and ideas emerging from the dodecaphonic and neo-modal movements of early 20th-century classical music.

Essentially, the system combines two (or more) scales into a unified tonal framework. These combined scales are arranged in thirds across a two-octave span, producing distinct features such as the omission of the perfect octave and a structural asymmetry between the lower and upper octaves. The effect is not necessarily perceived as overt bitonality, but rather as an expanded modal language that opens up to new harmonic and melodic possibilities – a musical colouring box slightly beyond the usual charts.