HOME can be seen both as a tribute to Northern Norway with its stark landscape and arctic location and as a commitment to this region. The title can also be an allusion to the search for identity, both from a personal and artistic point of view. All these feelings and aspirations find expression in the music of this album. Many of the pieces on this album are interpretations of well-known themes, while others are Hoff’s own compositions. Some of the pieces are completely improvised.

In May 2021, Morten Lindberg contacted me and asked if I could do a solo recording at the Stormen Concert Hall in Bodø. With open minds and very few preconceived ideas, we went forward and by and large took things as they came – the way we felt at the time, the current piano and the concert hall itself determined what we recorded over two days in August that year. This album does not aim to present a specific genre, with all the expectations that such a commitment could bring, but rather to give each number its own form and style. When interpreting text-based songs instrumentally, it is best to focus on melody, rhythm and phrasing. By freeing the phrasing of the melody from the constraints of a fixed tempo, I can put more power and intensity into my interpretation and expand and encourage the melodic material. – Jan Gunnar Hoff, 2022