The ease with which the Norwegian Ketil Bj°rnstad moves between music and literature was illustrated recently by the publication in English of his semi-fictionalised biography The Story of Edvard Munch coinciding of his latest album, Grace.
The former has been highly praised in Norwegian and German language versions while the latter, a "concept" album, sets to music passages from the poetry and prose of the English metaphysical poet John Donne (1572-1631).
One of the most hauntingly beautiful albums of recent times, this unusual marriage of words and music reaches beyond the arbitrary boundaries of jazz with an appeal to draw classical, folk and rock lovers towards its sharply etched musicality and shimmering, ambient soundscapes.
In London for the launch of his biography, Bj°rnstad is a tall figure with grey, thinning hair and the slightly puzzled-at-life look of an academic. His movements seem moderated by an inner tranquility, yet when he speaks it is with animation and enthusiasm.
"It had to be a Norwegian to do such a silly thing as put music to the words of John Donne," he laughs. "I began reading him 12 years ago and I was totally shocked by his existential thinking, it was so contemporary for me, looking at life with the consciousness of death."
Bj°rnstad immediately saw a musical challenge in setting Donne's words to music. "Even with my bad English I could understand the extremely aesthetic values of his writing," he says. "In contemporary jazz, everything is rhythmically based and melody is deconstructed. I wanted to try and rebuild the relationship with melody. Trust the melody and make it a very important element in the music. I wanted to ignite the same feelings of longing and intensity for life that Donne writes about by trying to make melody intense, really pressing myself and never being satisfied until I found the intervals that worked. Also trying to work towards simplicity, I did not want to make it 'art music' but free-flowing."
There is something of the Renaissance Man about Bj°rnstad, who is recognised as a unique figure in the arts in Norway. Trained as a concert pianist, he studied with Robert Riefling and in Paris and London, making his debut at 17 playing Bartok with the Oslo Philharmonic.
Performing Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and Greig with symphony orchestras and Debussy, Ravel, Prokofiev and Chopin in solo recitals, he heard Miles Davis's In A Silent Way and abruptly turned his back on a career as a concert pianist to explore jazz.
"I sensed that the challenge of freely improvised music was greater than that of 'classical' music - at least for me," he explains, "I felt a strong yearning to go in that direction."
Bj°rnstad has recorded 30 albums since 1973, including five volumes of solo piano and collaborations with both jazz and rock musicians.
Alongside his musical career, he has been equally prolific as a writer, with more than 20 novels, including Baby Sitter, Personal Motive and Villa Europa, collections of poetry and books of essays. In addition, he continues to write for newspapers and periodicals as a critic of literature and music.
His work on Munch, using the painter's own letters and diaries, is a biography with a difference, a literary reconstruction of the painter's life.
"It was an experiment," he admits. "My challenge was to take the lines in his own story and explore the undocumented areas of his life through fiction." The approach was prompted "because academic biographies of him are drowning in their own footnotes". Written with the collaboration of the Munch Museum, Bj°rnstad says he was amazed at the amount of material at his disposal.
"I am sure the authorities didn't understand how incredibly interesting their holdings were - they have enough with the paintings, I guess. Munch wanted to be a novelist, but this is not well known. He was a wonderful writer influenced by Johan Strindberg." Indeed, there are more than mere echoes of the intensely subjective nature of Strindberg's personal struggles in Munch's own inner torment. "His story was, well, quite shocking really," he says.
In 1993, Bj°rnstad's career as an improvising pianist was given impetus when he began recording for Manfred Eicher's Munich-based ECM label, and with The Sea and The Sea II and their predecessor, Water Stories, he began to gain international recognition. It was during the recording of The Sea that he realised the importance of the less-is-more ethic. "I am always very tired when I hear too many notes on a piano. This frenetic piano playing very much from the jazz scenario of the olden days," he says.
Grace, which was recorded live at the Vossajazz Festival in April last year, brings together some exceptional talent. Anneli Drecker and Bendik Hofseth are responsible for vocals, with Hofseth doubling on tenor saxophone. Eivind Aarset is on guitar (his album Electronique Noir is among the finest post-Miles electric jazz albums), Jan Bang provides samples, Arlid Andersen is on bass with percussion provided by Trilok Gurtu.
The music is astonishing in its transparency, each note able to stab with meaning. Nothing is gratuitous or for effect; instrumentalists congregate around the finely honed melodies before departing with improvised meditations upon what has gone before.
Anneli Drecker hits the right note of emotional neutrality in conveying Donne's writing without becoming emotionally entangled in the meaning of the text, as does Hofseth, whose first appearance beyond Norway's borders was as saxophonist in Mike Maineri's Steps Ahead.
"There is a kind of natural progress from one song to the next," says Bj°rnstad. "The wonderful Anneli Drecker, who for me is one of the biggest female talents, and the band, we have rehearsals for three days, everyone taking care of the main expression of what we wanted to do together, not much discussions but trying to find solutions."
Donne is probably best known for his Medition 17 from Devotions and the oft-quoted No man is an island, which opens and closes the album. His words, hanging on the finely honed melodies sung by Miss Drecker, suddenly acquire a timeless, floating quality. This is very much music that is washed with what has been dubbed the Nordic tone, projecting the stark imagery of nature near the Northern Lights. On pieces such as The Anniversary or Take A Flat Map, the profundity of the libretto is matched by Bj°rnstad's mystical yet evocative tranquility that seems to transport the subconscious towards moods of reflection and introspection.
"It is important for me to remember music and literature are very different ways of communicating," says Bj°rnstad. "Being creative in music is more direct. It happens in the moment, but with a book it takes so long to write, to read and then think about it. But for the intellectual side of me as a musician it is useful to be an author, to look at your musical work with a little bit of suspicion and find out, was that really so clever? And discover perhaps it was not! So you stretch yourself further, which is what we had to do on Grace.
"If there is some beauty in the melody lines, play it and leave it at that - don't add a punch line."
The Story of Edvard Munch by Ketil Bj°rnstad is published by Arcadia Books (£12.99 in UK). Grace is released by Emarcy. His music is also available on ECM records.