Viktoria Tolstoy & Jacob Karlzon
Who we are

Viktoria Tolstoy – vocals
Jacob Karlzon – piano

Viktoria Tolstoy confidently states that she has never had a single singing lesson. Her autodidactic training was more than enough to earn the jazz singer and great-great-granddaughter of Leo Tolstoy her exceptional standing on the international jazz scene, not least promoted by the hype that surrounded Scandinavian artists such as Esbjörn Svensson, Rebekka Bakken, Bugge Wesseltoft, Sidsel Endresen, Mari Boine, Nils Landgren and many others around the time of the beginning of the new millennium. After initially winning the approval of her own country's jazz elite, she produced a strongly pop-oriented album two years later that propelled her to the top of the Swedish charts and made her an overnight star. She would later say about this phase that although she had sung pop, she just didn't feel it, because it left her no room for improvisation, and that jazz was her soul. Over the course of three decades, Viktoria Tolstoy and the pianist Jacob Karlzon have built a musical dialogue that is characterised by mutual trust, curiosity and understated audaciousness. Their duo programme is both a reflection on the past as well as its continuation – and intimate conversation defined by time, friendship and change.