Trygve Seim is a Norwegian jazz musician and composer. He started to play the saxophone in 1985 after hearing Jan Garbarek's CD Eventyr.
Career
Seim was born in Oslo. He studied music at Foss videregående skole and attended the Jazz program at the Trondheim Musikkonservatorium, where he completed studies in jazz saxophone. Further more Seim studied composition with Terje Bjørklund, Bertil Palmar Johansen, Edward Vesala and Bjørn Kruse. In 1991, he and fellow student, the pianist Christian Wallumrød founded the group Airamero in 1991, including bassist Johannes Eick and drummer Per Oddvar Johansen. The band released the albumAiramero in 1994. It also undertook several concert tours in Scandinavia and Germany. Seim became part of Jon Balke's band Oslo 13 in 1992, and took over the joint leadership of this orchestra in 1994 together with Morten Halle and Torbjørn Sunde. Now the band is called 1300 Oslo. He is also a member of jazz quartetThe Source with Øyvind Brække, Mats Eilertsen and Per Oddvar Johansen. They have made five records and played several concert tours all over Europe and Russia, and played with Edward Vesala and Kenny Wheeler. Seim's debut CD release as a leader, Different Rivers, released on the German record labelECMin 2001, received good reviews all over the world, winning the German Record Critics Prize, "Jahrespreis – Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik". Since then, he has released several records on ECM. He has, more recently, composed music for classical musicians, especially Norwegian mezzo-soprano Anne-Lise Berntsen, soprano Tora Augestad, violinist Atle Sponberg and such as his new work Between Voice and Presence for the Trio Mediaeval. For the 2006 Vossajazz Festival, he wrote a full-length commissioned concert, Reiser. In 2014 Seim contributed on Mats Eilertsen's Rubicon, the commissioned work for Vossajazz 2014. On this occasion he was the stand-in for Tore Brunborg who missed the event. Currently he has been touring with his own Trygve Seim Ensemble performing his own compositions. In addition he collaborates in "Trygve Seim/Frode Haltli Duo", the quartet The Source and soprano Tora Augestad's "Music for a While". He also tour and record within projects like Iro Haarla Quintet, Sinikka Langeland’s group "Starflowers", Jai Shankar Ensemble. In October, Seim announced on Facebook that his next album Rumi Songs would be released on ECM in early 2016.
Personal life
Seim has two children with the Norwegian journalist and writer Åsne Seierstad.
