Bio
“a phenomenal musical conversation…”
– Erik Wallrup, Svenska Dagbladet 2016
Jordi Carrasco Hjelm is a Swedish double bass player focusing on chamber music and free improvisation. He lives in Amsterdam, where he was a Bachelor student in the class of Olivier Thiery and Rick Stotijn at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam. He finished his Masters degree in Improvisation with the jazz violinist Tim Kliphuis and the music theorist Ralf Pisters in 2019.
He is principal bassist with the O/Modernt Chamber Orchestra led by the violinist Hugo Ticciati, an ensemble that combines old and contemporary compositions in unique takes on chamber music programming. The ensemble consists of chamber musicians from all over Europe and plays regularly in the Wigmore Hall in London and in the yearly O/modernt festival in Stockholm.
In the Netherlands he is a core member of the Asko Schönberg Ensemble who are leading the field of contemporary music and regularly premiers new works on their home stage Muziekgebouw aan’t IJ in Amsterdam.
As a passionate advocate for free improvisation on stages for classical music and for chamber music as an inherently improvisational form he has performed in several European chamber music festivals such as the Oxford Chamber Music Festival, Internationaal Kamermuziek Festival Utrecht, Felix! Festival Köln, KMF Sylt and most notably as a regular guest in Musikdorn Ernen in Switzerland.
Jordi is a multifaceted freelance musician and has been a guest player with a diverse set of ensembles such as the Matthew Barley Ensemble (UK), the location-based improvisation concept Buro Nieuw Perspectief (NL) , Stuttgarter Kammerorchester (DE), Rotterdams Philharmonisch Orkest (NL), Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Orkester Arte Frizzante (CH) and has played with a wide array of internationally renowned musicians including Priya Mitchel, Maria Wloszczowska, Julian Arp, Gwilym Simcock, Luke Hsu, Ema Nikolovska and Abel Celacoe.
Jordi has a keen interest in improvisation, composition and programming. A creative musician from the very beginning he started playing with the folk music band Garizim out of his parents basement in 2011. The group went on to play all over the country and released two albums and an EP. Since 2015 he has been developing new improvisations together with the dutch improviser, singer and composer Yanna Pelser.
In 2016 he created a piece of improvised music for a sounding sculpture by the artist Hanneke de Munck that was premiered in the chamber music hall of the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and their collaboration was continued with a performance in Hanneke’s exposition in Sijthoff Cultuur in Leiden in 2017 and a premier of a new composition for the sculpture “Het Propheet en het Verlangen” in NDSM Fuse in Amsterdam in 2022.
In 2014 he was part of creating the Berlin based group c / o chamber orchestra that works with principles on non-hierarchical collaboration.
He has premiered some of his own pieces in the festival KMF Sylt, Ölberg Kirche Berlin and headed the creation of a conceptual chamber music program with members of the c / o Chamber Orchestra including his own compositions in Mariehman, Åland in 2022.
Jordi has played on two studio albums with O/modernt, White Light (Signum Classics 2018) and From the ground up (Signum Classics 2019) that won the Gramophone Award for best concept album in 2020. The c /o Chamber Orchestra released its debut album Divertissement! on BIS records in 2021 and was nominated for Album of the year by Presto Music. The folk music band Garizim released original music on the albums Fri (Gammalthea 2011), See the birds are coming (Gammalthea 2015) and the self released EP Moments in Between.