Sofia Jernberg

Only 24 years old, Swedish vocalist Sofia Jernberg has already leaped over a hurdle that still leaves many in the avant-garde baffled (or not bothering to leap at all): making difficult music sound pretty. Jernberg picks out gleaming melody in the roughage of both atonal composition and free improvisation, and that makes her a rare, highly intelligent bird.

On Paavo (Apart)—this year’s wonderful self-titled debut from the octet she coleads with Swedish pianist Cecilia Persson—Jernberg writes and sings with an elastic sense of how to restrict her musicians while turning them loose. Her light-as-air Blossom Dearie pipes daring them onward, Paavo romps through prog-rock, 12-tone chaos and rickety waltzes, all in a manner that’s as gentle as it is progressive.

For her Chicago debut, Jernberg will have two different systems through which to channel her whimsical worldview. Her New Friends, who play at the Hideout, feature a small group of local improv stalwarts, including bassist Jason Roebke, percussionist Jason Adasiewicz, reedist Keefe Jackson and cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm. She’ll also be the spotlight performer in cellist Lonberg-Holm’s massive Lightbox Orchestra. (She and Lonberg-Holm play together at Myopic.) As was evident during the group’s Pitchfork performance this summer, conductor Lonberg-Holm has bold ideas of his own on how to merge the improvised and the composed. Let’s hope this is only the beginning of Jernberg’s Chicago appearances.—Matthew Lurie