The presentation took place after the Maria Kannegaard Trio had performed a concert for a full house at the Bærum Jazz Festival. “A formidable and distinctive pianist who has moved and touched a large audience with his music,” says the Norwegian Jazz Forum in its justification for the award. In addition to the statuette of the artist Lise Frogg, NOK 75,000 comes from the Norwegian Jazzforum.
The Buddy Prize has been awarded since 1956, when Rowland Greenberg received the statuette, and has gone to musicians who, over a number of years, have left their own mark on Norwegian jazz. So does Maria Kannegaard. “At the age of 20, the Danish-born pianist and songwriter Maria Kannegaard is about to make her mark on our home jazz parnass,” said Arbeiderbladet in 1991, in a preview of a concert at Musikkflekken in Sandvika. A place that, funnily enough, was a stone’s throw from where she received the award on Thursday. This was an excellent opportunity to get to know a pianist we would hear more of, was the conclusion in 1991. We got to hear more of her eventually, but it took time.
Maria Kannegaard has long been open about her psychological problems, which have hampered her activity for long periods. She talked about this last year in the acclaimed NRK podcast “The Pianist” by Joachim Førsund.
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Kannegaard was born in Denmark, came to Norway as a 10-year-old in 1980, and started at the jazz line in Trondheim in 1992. There she put together the first edition of her trio with Thomas Strønen on drums and Mats Eilertsen on bass. The trio has existed ever since, gradually with Ole Morten Vågan instead of Eilertsen. One of the consequences of the pianist’s condition was that for a while she thought the others joined because they felt sorry for her. They themselves considered themselves privileged.
The first album of the Maria Kannegaard Trio, “Breaking The Surface”, came out in 2000. The liner notes were written by Dagsavisen’s jazz critic Roald Helgheim, for the occasion in English, since Kannegaard obviously had international potential. Helgheim wrote in his annual summary here in the newspaper that he considered the album the third best of the year, behind the new records by Charles Lloyd and Joni Mitchell. In such a company, Kannegaard thus found his natural place. “Maria Kannegaard writes music like no one else,” Helgheim wrote. The music was so soulful that it made a massive impression, and at the same time possessed an inner calm, he believed.
In the 24 years that have passed since then, Maria Kannegaard has released a number of albums, but at irregular intervals, and she has rarely been seen on the concert stages. In the podcast, she tells her story about diagnoses, medication, admissions and alternating treatment methods, and about good friends who have stood up for her in the hardest times. She was at times very down, and had almost given up music for long periods.
Maria Kannegaard came back with the monumental, completely different album “Nådeslås» in 2019. An album that doesn’t sound like anything else. The more jazz-oriented album “Sand i en vik” won her the Spellemannprisen for 2021. A new album is planned, according to her label Jazzland.