Eirik Gjerdevik - Eirik the Viking (2014)

“Eirik the Viking” has been the stage name of tuba player Eirik Gjerdevik since his student days in Manchester, England in the 1990s. It is also the title of his new CD, the title track of which was composed by Torstein Aagaard-Nilsen, with whom he has collaborated for many years. The composer was commissioned to write a melodic piece for solo tuba and brass band. After reading up on Eirik Bloodaxe, Aagaard-Nilsen ended up composing two numbers based on the Viking king’s life and times. The commissioned piece, “Bloodaxe’ Lament”, strives to capture the aged Eirik Bloodaxe and the remorse he must have felt after a lifetime of killing and plundering. The title track, “Eirik the Viking”, a frenetic solo etude depicting the life that Eirik Bloodaxe lived, was the composer’s way of “ridding himself” of the cruel Viking.

In addition to the saga of Eirik Bloodaxe, the CD offers a varied bouquet of pieces both for solo tuba and for brass band instrumentation, including “Carnival of Venice”, Frode Thingnæs’s “Concertino for Tuba”, and Erland von Koch’s “Monologue No. 9 for Tuba”. We also hear a recent commissioned work, “Tuba Libre”, composed for Gjerdevik by Lars Erik Gudim.

Eirik Gjerdevik (b. 1968) is originally from Fusa, but now resides in Bergen. He studied tuba at the Bergen Conservatory of Music with Nils Eivind Nikolaisen (Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra), and later at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, England. Over the last ten years, Gjerdevik has continued developing as a tuba player under his mentor and friend, Robert Tucci, in Germany. As musician, soloist, and conductor, he has become a well-known figure on the Norwegian brass band scene, and since 1996 he has been a permanent member of The Norwegian Navy Band Bergen, with the rank of lieutenant commander.