ABOUT

Jordan Sand weaves voice into the organ-like resonances of bowed double bass. Raw, resonant, gritty and beautiful, her live sets have been described as “impressive” (New York Times) and “Joni Mitchell meets Ligeti” (Omaha Under the Radar). Inflections of classical string playing and free jazz collide with extended techniques and the unorthodox, reckless spirit of the underground.

Based in New York City for many years, Sand worked widely as a bassist across the interlocking scenes of folk, pop, classical, and contemporary music. She has played Carnegie Hall, NPR’s Tiny Desk, Saturday Night Live, and the Apollo Theater, and toured extensively both as a freelancer, often focused on new music, free jazz, and klezmer, and as a solo artist, drawing from her own evolving repertoire for voice and bass.

In performance, Sand moves fluidly between polyphonic composition and free improvisation. Her solo world is both intimate and expansive, populating the architecture of song with radical sound palettes: layers of string noise, crooked melodies, siren-like singing, and at times harrowing counterpoint between voice and the bowed textures of her instrument. She has appeared as a soloist at experimental and underground venues in Europe and North America since 2012. Since 2020, her sound design and composition has also been featured in collaborations with visual artists, filmmakers, researchers, and poets. Her work has been supported by the Norwegian Arts Council, the Harriet Hale Woolley Foundation, Trondheim Kommune, and Norsk Komponist Foreningen.

Originally from the U.S., Sand has lived in four countries, driven twice cross-continent in July, and plays on a Hungarian double bass of otherwise unknown origin. She holds a PhD from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and is currently based in Trondheim, Norway.