Most people hear tuba and think marching band, or maybe the comic relief in a New Orleans brass section. Daniel Herskedal spent years proving that instinct wrong. He plays the tuba and bass trumpet like lead voices, not rhythm section furniture, and the effect is strange in the best way — low, breathy, almost vocal, like someone singing through a foghorn.

Herskedal grew up in northern Norway and trained seriously, studying in Trondheim and later in London, which gave him both the technical command to do unconventional things with a notoriously unwieldy instrument and the taste to know when restraint beats showing off. His breakthrough partnership was with saxophonist Marius Neset, and records like Neck of the Woods (2012) and Slow Eastbound Train (2013) showed two young Scandinavian musicians building something that sounded both ancient and completely new — folk melodies, classical structure, jazz improvisation, all folded together without seams.

On his own records, Herskedal leans into atmosphere. There's a lot of space in his music, long tones, slow builds, the kind of pacing that rewards patience rather than demanding attention. He often writes with pianist Eyolf Dale, and together they've made albums that feel more like soundtracks to imagined landscapes than conventional jazz dates — fjords, harbors, winter light. It's not background music exactly, but it doesn't rush you either.

What makes Herskedal worth seeking out isn't novelty — plenty of musicians can make a strange instrument do unusual things once. It's that he's built a genuine voice on the tuba, one that sounds like nothing else in contemporary jazz. If you only know the instrument from Dixieland records or John Philip Sousa, his music will rearrange your sense of what it can do.