Hedvig brings the heavy to jazz festival

Things get loud with rocking trio from Norway

Some acts at Jazzfest are definitely jazz, some are definitely not, and some rest on the margins, none more heavily than the Hedvig Mollestad Trio.

The musicians from Norway put on a 70-minute show at the National Arts Centre’s Fourth Stage Tuesday night that was a lesson in — as occasional Citizen metal critic Shawn Jam Hill would write — heaviosity, a thing as rare at Jazzfest as molly and a mosh pit.

“It might get loud,” the blond, 30-something Hedvig Mollestad Thomassen said, before she launched the 6 p.m. show with a riff that proved her “might” unnecessary. Thomassen plays her hollow-body Gibson with great force, and it was no surprise when she gave a mid-set shoutout to Tony Iommi, “one of my heroes, the guitarist from Black Sabbath.” Imagine if John Scofield were a metalhead and you’re getting there.

What keeps it all recognizably grounded in jazz are Ivar Loe Bjørnstad on drums and Ellen Brekken on bass. Both shone, especially Brekken when she put down her electric Fender and picked up her standup bass, and Bjørnstad in a drum solo that surely had the percussive madman John Bonham smiling in his grave.

None of the musicians seems bound to any genre of music. Thomassen collaborates with rock bands yet she was young jazz artist of the year at Molde-jazz in Norway in 2009. Since then her homeland has embraced her and the trio, with the sort of Nordic public funding and support that are but wistful fantasy to Canadian jazz musicians.

It was their first visit to Canada, with only a show in Vancouver before Ottawa, which may explain the lack of a sold-out crowd in the compact space of the Fourth stage, and the lack of more faces that have seen fewer than 50 years.

The Hedvig Mollestad Trio have an arresting and unusually visceral sound for the jazz world: here’s hoping that Jazzfest brings them back next year to play a larger stage, before a larger audience.