Lis Wessberg, Veronika Rud - In the Wake of Blue (2026) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

April Records proudly presents the new album from Danish trombonist and composer Lis Wessberg. Her most personal album to date, In The Wake of Blue is a song-driven work exploring transience, love, and transformation. Expanding her writing while remaining rooted in her distinctive instrumental voice, Wessberg creates an intimate musical landscape where lyric, melody, and texture carry equal weight. Wessberg has established herself as a leading voice on the European jazz scene through her band Yellow Map and a series of acclaimed releases on April Records.

Her previous album, Twain Walking (2024), marked her first step into English-language songwriting and earned a Danish Music Award nomination in 2025 for the track Behind the Walls. In The Wake of Blue develops this direction further. The album draws on images from nature - sea, tides, clouds, mist, and birds - used as emotional anchors rather than abstractions. These elements frame songs that move from uncertainty and loss toward openness, connection, and renewal. The title reflects this arc: "blue" as melancholy, depth, and memory, and what emerges in its wake.

Vocalist Veronika Rud is central to the album's sound, bringing vulnerability and clarity to the songs. Rather than a traditional singer-led project, the music unfolds as a dialogue between voice and trombone, with Wessberg's warm, airy tone mirroring and extending each song's emotional core. At times the two move in close unison; elsewhere, they diverge and reconnect.

The core ensemble - Steen Rasmussen (piano and keys), Lennart Ginman (bass), and Jeppe Gram (drums) - provides a responsive, understated foundation, while string quartet Live Strings appear on two tracks, expanding the ensemble's depth and resonce. In The Wake of Blue offers a quietly assured statement from an artist continuing to refine a voice that speaks as clearly through brass as it does through words.

Tracklist
01 The Promise
02 Longing
03 In the Wake of Blue
04 Flux
05 Vapor
06 When Birds Flock
07 The Endless Thread
08 The Quiet Edge
09 When Shadows Bloom