Elysian Fields & Jan Gunnar Hoff will bring Nordic jazz, Australian improvisation and Scandinavian folk influences together at The Concourse in Chatswood on 9 October 2026.
There is a particular quality to music that has travelled a long way before reaching the listener. It carries traces of where it began, but also something of the journey itself.
In October, a concert in Chatswood will bring together musicians whose musical paths began thousands of kilometres apart. Norwegian pianist and composer Jan Gunnar Hoff will join Sydney ensemble Elysian Fields for Northern Lights–Southern Cross, a collaboration shaped by friendship, Scandinavian heritage and a shared interest in what happens when jazz meets folk tradition, classical composition and improvisation.
The distance between Hoff's home in Bodø, above the Arctic Circle, and Sydney is around 15,000 kilometres. The concert will turn that geographical separation into its central idea, moving musically between the northern landscapes of Scandinavia and the southern world represented by the Southern Cross.
The performance will take place at The Concourse Lounge in Chatswood on Friday, 9 October 2026. It will begin at 7.30pm, offering an evening in which the atmosphere of the north will be interpreted through a distinctly Australian ensemble.
At the centre of it all will be a musical relationship that began not in Sydney, but in northern Norway.
A Friendship Across 15,000 Kilometres
The connection between Jan Gunnar Hoff and Elysian Fields will have its roots in a meeting between Hoff and Jenny Eriksson, the Sydney-based musician and founder of Elysian Fields.
The pair first performed together in northern Norway. From that encounter, a musical friendship developed, eventually leading to the collaboration that will come to Chatswood in October.
There is a pleasing circularity to the journey. Hoff, a musician whose compositions have often been informed by the environment and cultural traditions of northern Norway, will travel south to meet an Australian ensemble whose work has itself been influenced by Scandinavian musical heritage.
Northern Lights–Southern Cross will therefore be more than a meeting of performers. It will be a meeting of places.
The title captures that relationship without needing to explain it. The northern lights belong to Hoff's part of the world, while the Southern Cross is one of the most familiar constellations in the southern sky. Between them lies a vast distance, but music will provide a way of crossing it.
Elysian Fields And The Scandinavian Connection
Elysian Fields emerged in Sydney in 2015, founded by Jenny Eriksson alongside pianist Matt McMahon and saxophonist Matt Keegan.
The ensemble has developed a distinctive approach around the meeting of Nordic folk traditions, contemporary jazz, classical influences and improvisation. Rather than treating those traditions as separate musical categories, Elysian Fields allows them to overlap.
That approach is closely connected to Eriksson's Scandinavian heritage. The ensemble has brought together Australian improvising musicians to explore a musical vocabulary that can be lyrical and atmospheric while retaining the unpredictability of live improvisation.
Its instrumentation also contributes to that character.
For Northern Lights–Southern Cross, the ensemble will include Susie Bishop on voice and violin, Loretta Palmeiro on saxophone, Jenny Eriksson on electric viola da gamba, Jacques Emery on double bass and Rease Cameron on drums.
The electric viola da gamba is perhaps the most unexpected instrument in that combination. Rooted in European musical history, the instrument will provide a distinctive bridge between older traditions and the contemporary language of the ensemble.
Together with saxophone, violin, voice, piano, bass and drums, it will allow the music to move through different textures rather than remaining fixed within a conventional jazz format.
Elysian Fields has released three albums and performed at jazz, folk and classical venues and festivals across Australia's east coast. Its work has been described by Limelight Magazine as a compelling mixture of Scandinavian folk, classical and jazz influences.
Jan Gunnar Hoff And The Sound Of The North
Jan Gunnar Hoff will arrive in Sydney with a career that stretches across several decades and a musical vocabulary formed partly by his life in northern Norway.
Based in Bodø, above the Arctic Circle, Hoff has established himself as a pianist, composer, arranger and band leader within European jazz. His work has moved between jazz and contemporary composition, often retaining a strong sense of melody and spaciousness.
His international career has also brought him into contact with some of the most recognisable names in jazz. Hoff has performed and recorded with guitarists Pat Metheny and Mike Stern, as well as musicians including Weather Report percussionist Alex Acuña and drummer Gary Husband.
Those collaborations have placed him within an international jazz tradition, but his music remains connected to the northern landscapes from which it emerged.
Hoff has released 27 albums during his career. He also served as arranger, pianist and musical director on Quiet Winter Night, a Grammy-nominated album that brought together a range of Scandinavian musical influences.
His work has received significant recognition in Norway, including the country's prestigious Buddy Prize, while his composition has also been recognised through the Edvard Grieg Prize.
For Sydney audiences, however, the significance of his appearance will be less about individual career milestones than about hearing how those experiences have come together in a live setting.
A New Work For Sydney
One of the most significant elements of Northern Lights–Southern Cross will be a new composition by Hoff.
The work will receive its world premiere at the concert, having been commissioned by Jenny Eriksson and Elysian Fields specifically for the collaboration.
That makes the performance a moment that cannot simply be recreated through a recording. The piece will be heard publicly for the first time in Chatswood, performed by the musicians for whom the work has been conceived.
The new composition will sit alongside Hoff's Living and Meditatus, both of which appeared on Elysian Fields' 2020 album.
The inclusion of those pieces will provide a connection between the musicians' existing work and the new collaboration. The audience will hear music that already forms part of the Elysian Fields story alongside a composition that will begin its own history on the night.
There is something appropriate about that balance. The concert will look backwards to musical traditions and previous collaborations while also creating something that has not existed before.
From Nordic Folk To Australian Jazz
The musical conversation between Scandinavia and Australia will not be based simply on geography.
Nordic folk traditions have long provided Elysian Fields with a source of melody, rhythm and atmosphere. Australian jazz and improvisation will bring a different set of influences, shaped by the country's own multicultural musical landscape.
Jan Gunnar Hoff's arrival will add another dimension.
His compositions are grounded in the European jazz tradition, but his northern Norwegian surroundings form an important part of his musical identity. Elysian Fields, meanwhile, will approach those influences from Sydney, interpreting them through musicians who have spent years working within Australia's jazz, folk and classical scenes.
The result will be less about reproducing Scandinavian music in Australia than about seeing what happens when different musical experiences are allowed to meet.
Improvisation will be central to that process.
It creates the possibility of small changes in tempo, tone and interaction from one performance to another. A melody can become more spacious, a rhythm can shift, and a familiar composition can take on a different shape according to the musicians sharing the stage.
That sense of uncertainty is part of what makes a live collaboration meaningful.
The Concourse After Dark
The setting will add another layer to the evening.
The Concourse sits at the centre of Chatswood, surrounded by the movement of one of Sydney's busiest north shore districts. By the time Northern Lights–Southern Cross begins at 7.30pm, the daytime traffic of Victoria Avenue will have given way to an evening audience arriving for music, theatre and the arts.
The concert will be held in The Concourse Lounge at 409 Victoria Avenue, Chatswood.
Unlike the grand scale of the Sydney Opera House, where Hoff will also appear earlier in October, The Concourse offers a different kind of setting. The Chatswood performance will place this transcontinental collaboration within a local community arts precinct, surrounded by the restaurants, shops and evening activity of the North Shore.
That contrast is worth noting. The music will speak of distant landscapes, but the experience itself will be thoroughly Sydney.
It will be possible to arrive in Chatswood by public transport, spend some time around Victoria Avenue and then settle into the concert as the evening develops.
An Evening Between Two Hemispheres
Northern Lights–Southern Cross will ultimately be about connection.
The title suggests a journey between two skies, but the more interesting journey will take place through the musicians themselves. Hoff will bring decades of experience shaped by northern Norway and European jazz. Eriksson and Elysian Fields will bring a distinctly Australian perspective informed by Scandinavian heritage and contemporary improvisation.
Their meeting will not erase the differences between those places. Instead, it will give them room to coexist.
For an audience, that may mean hearing familiar musical forms from an unfamiliar angle. A jazz piano may suddenly suggest a distant landscape. A folk melody may become the starting point for improvisation. The electric viola da gamba may connect centuries-old European musical history with the contemporary Australian stage.
These contrasts will give the concert its character.
There will also be something quietly symbolic about hearing a new work commissioned in Australia by musicians whose relationship began in northern Norway. The piece will carry the history of that journey from one hemisphere to another, while its first performance will belong entirely to Sydney.
Event Details
Northern Lights–Southern Cross: Elysian Fields & Jan Gunnar Hoff will take place on Friday, 9 October 2026, at 7.30pm.
The performance will be held at The Concourse Lounge, The Concourse, 409 Victoria Avenue, Chatswood NSW 2067.
Tickets at the time of publication will be priced at $55 for general admission, $48 for concession and $40 for students. Premium seating with an antipasti platter will be available for $80. The performance will be open to all ages.
For tickets and the latest event information, visit the official Northern Lights–Southern Cross ticket page.
When Two Skies Meet
By the time the musicians take their places in Chatswood, the northern summer light of Bodø will be far away. Sydney will be moving through its own October evening, with the Southern Cross above a city whose relationship with the night sky is very different.
Inside The Concourse Lounge, those distances will become less important.
The music will carry fragments of northern Norway, Scandinavian tradition and Australian improvisation into the same room. Hoff's piano will meet the distinctive voice of Elysian Fields, while an entirely new composition will begin its life in front of a Sydney audience.
It will be a small crossing of a very large distance.
And when the final notes disappear into the room, the northern lights and the Southern Cross will remain where they have always been, separated by half a world but briefly brought together through music.