Daniel Herskedal lives in one of the coldest places in Norway. The virtuoso brass player, an acclaimed if somewhat unlikely star of European jazz, recently moved to Røros, an old copper-mining town and Unesco World Heritage site in the mountains near the border with Sweden.

“Røros is around 650m above sea level, so it’s not super high, but it’s far from the coast and it gets cold enough. I think the record is minus-50 degrees,” Herskedal says from his music studio in the town. “We even had minus degrees in August this year, though only during the night and only for a couple of days. And from early October to late May we have snow. But the cold suits me. You can go skiing, the snow reflects more of the light, and it’s easier not to get too winter-depressed.”

As well as photographs showing the 43-year-old sporting a classic Scandi jumper in a frozen northern landscape, and album titles that range from Call for Winter to A Single Sunbeam and Out of the Fog, his geographical location and climatic observations seem to perfectly match the music he makes.

An innovator on the sonorous if sometimes unwieldy tuba, as well as the resonant and W Heath Robinson – like bass trumpet, Herskedal creates “gorgeously hypnotic” music that marries cool Nordic jazz and improvisation with the warmer melodies and rhythms of folk, classical, ambient and traditional music.

The results are expansive, expressive and often supremely cinematic. They also defy expectation.