Esben Tjalve grew up in Denmark where he played original music from an early age. He graduated from the RAM with Bachelor Honours in 2004 and later did a Master in Composition at the Guildhall School of Music. Since then he has composed and recorded music for Universal, Warner Bros., BBC4, BBC Radio Drama, BBC Cbeebies, theatre productions and the award-winning animation ”The Mask of Blackness”. He has released two albums with his band Red Kite and two albums with the trio Human Being Human as well as four albums with fellow Dane bassist Henrik Jensen.
Esben has collaborated with many fellow contemporary jazz musicians including Christian Vuust, Chris Cheek, Torben Bjørnskov, Frederik Bülow, Jasper Høiby, Efrat Alony, Toni Kofi, Ernesto Simpson, Henrik Jensen, Hannes Riepler, Rory Simmons and Fulvio Sigurta to mention a few and worked with several musicians outside of jazz like Lucinda Belle, Raf Vilar, Ghanean rapper M3nsa, world music artist Muntu Valdo and American Singer Kristina Train, with whom he played on Jools Holland In 2012.
Esben Tjalve’s Red Kite has just released the album Popludium with Babel Label featuring Fulvio Sigurta - trumpet, Hannes Riepler - guitar, Esben Tjalve - keys, Jasper Høiby - bass and Marc Michel - drums.
“Tjalve’s writing is intelligent and consistently interesting with rich colours and textures but there’s an engaging spikiness about the music too that seems to draw its inspiration from contemporary American jazz developments”. - The Jazz Mann
"Tjalve's accessible but knotty playing pulls in every listener". - Alyn Shipton