BUDDY AWARD 2010

I am very happy - and touched - to get the highest award in Norwegian jazz - The BUDDY AWARD 2010.
This is what the board said:

The Norwegian jazz community presents its highest award to Karl Seglem

Musician, composer and record company founder Karl Seglem received the Buddy Prize 2010, the highest award presented by the Norwegian jazz community, on Friday evening. Karl Seglem is one of Norway’s foremost saxophonists, and has also made the goat’s horn his signature instrument. As a musician and composer Seglem has created a unique musical idiom inspired by jazz, folk and world music. In addition to pursuing his own career as a musician, Seglem has for the past twenty years presented new, innovative Norwegian music through his record company NORCD.

In a surprise move just before Karl Seglem was to give a concert with music from his critically acclaimed album Ossicles at the Bergen Jazz Forum, Nina Torske and Bjørnar Vasenden, representing the board of the Norwegian Jazz Federation, presented him with the Buddy Prize for 2010. The prize consists of NOK 50 000 and a statuette by artist Lise Frogg. The Buddy Prize was established by the Norwegian Jazz Federation in 1956, and the list of artists who have received the prize is no less than an inventory of the highlights of Norwegian jazz for the past five decades. The prize is awarded to a musician who has won distinction as an outstanding performer on his or her own instrument and at the same time has been a driving force in efforts to increase the popularity of jazz.

No-one who is familiar with the Norwegian jazz scene will be surprised to hear that this year’s prize went to Karl Seglem. Seglem has been active as a saxophonist and composer since the 1980s, and has devoted many years to developing his own distinctive musical idiom. Seglem is a pioneer within the Norwegian jazz community, and his fusion of jazz with folk and world music has attracted attention internationally.

Karl Seglem collaborates internationally with musicians from countries such as Portugal, Bulgaria and Pakistan, as well as with a number of Norwegian artists in other creative fields such as film, dance, visual art and poetry. He himself has also had his poetry published, and has collaborated with playwright Jon Fosse. Seglem has also developed projects targeted at children, such as “Isglem” together with Terje Isungset, and was responsible for initiating Norway’s first jazz festival for children, the Bajazz Festival. For the past twenty years Seglem has been operating the record company NORCD, with more than 100 releases spanning a broad range of jazz idioms from folk and world music to free improvisation.

Karl Seglem has previously received the Gammeleng-Prize and the Edvard Award.