The myth about Nordic jazz is that it's all cool and cerebral, that it's all about icy reverb and keening melodies. But if that's the case, what accounts for performers like the 26-year-old saxophonist Jonas Kullhammar, whose music swings like a New York City Saturday night and burns with a bright, bluesy flame?

Genetics, I suppose. And while that might seem like an odd explanation for why someone born in Stockholm should be as comfortable with jazz as any American, there just might be something to it.

"Both my dad and my grandfather are jazz musicians, and both of them play drums," Kullhammar explains, taking a break from his gardening chores for a long-distance conversation with the Georgia Straight. "So I started playing drums when I was about”¦ Well, as soon as I could start, so I guess I was around two years old. And then I started playing piano when I was seven, and when I was nine I started saxophone. I've been playing all my life."

And he's been playing jazz all his life, although he didn't always enjoy it. "It wasn't until I was around 15 or 16 that I started to like jazz," he notes. "Before that, I was more into soul music and hip-hop, stuff like that. And nowadays I listen a lot to rock music, also. Experimental rock, and some electronica, and a lot of Swedish punk bands like the Hives and the (International) Noise Conspiracy."

Kullhammar's eclectic tastes, together with his collection of more than 10,000 recordings-"I'm a record shopaholic," he admits-help make his CDs unusually well-rounded affairs. Snake City North, his latest, is rooted in hard bop, but it incorporates funk and blues influences as well as a raucous Gene Vincent tribute. And although it finds Kullhammar and his quartet accompanied by the 13-piece Norbotten Big Band, the saxophonist says it's a good representation of what listeners can expect when he plays the Ironworks on Monday (June 27) and the Vancouver East Cultural Centre on Tuesday (June 28).

"Torbjí¶rn Gulz, our piano player, did most of the arrangements and he based them on how the quartet plays," he contends. "The big band didn't get too much room; it was really important that it sounded like the quartet, even though we added 13 more people."

Despite the additional horns, Kullhammar's technical mastery and high spirits are plainly audible on Snake City North, and should be even more in evidence on the concert stage.