Grace Under Fire: How Vetle Nærø Improvised When His Instruments Got Lost at the Airport

As legend would have it, Niccolò Paganini completed one of his legendary violin performances on a single string when the others snapped one by one. Whether it was the art of showmanship, or just a display of ridiculous talent, is a matter still open for discussion hundreds of years later.

Vetle Nærø had his own moment that would’ve made Paganini proud.

Earlier this month, the Norwegian neo-classic composer dazzled with a performance on the piano, a special guest of the 2026 Bergtatt Festival. That haunting mid-morning set at Luster’s Dale Church, built during the first half of the 13th century, was unexpectedly unplugged — through no fault of his own.

“The concert was going to be a more electronic set with my synthesizers, some gear. But they were lost at the airport,” he tells Billboard. “So I had to basically rearrange my concert and return to solo piano.”

The show must, and did, go on. The performance, and his words to the 200 guests, had some in floods of happy tears. To create “calm and connection,” he says, “is the reason why I do this.”

Thanfully, the musical equipment has since been returned to its owner.

Born in Oslo in 2000, and raised in the quiet coastal town of Ålesund, Nærø studied classical piano at a young age, learning his craft from the playbooks of Chopin and Rachmaninoff. By age nine, he had discovered the godfathers of minimalism, including Philip Glass and Arvo Part. Later, he would form a jazz trio and the electronic scene came calling.

His first album, 2018’s By Heart, was a spontaneous project recorded in a single day. Its followup, Introspection, came in 2021. A third, From Moments, dropped in 2023, and his most recent album release, All Moments Must Pass, was issued in May 2025 on Piano & Coffee Records.

He’s currently mapping out his fifth studio album, to be released in 2027.

“It’s forming up to be a very big release, at a bigger scale than I’m the previous one,” he hints. “I get to work with some amazing people that really believe in what I’ve made.”