May 26, 2026 11:08 AM
Sonny Rollins Passes Away at 95
Sonny Rollins, the iconic saxophonist, composer and improviser whose career stretched from the origins of bebop to 21st…
Superposition cooked up a pliable and porous sound at this year’s April Jazz Festival in Espoo, Finland.
(Photo: Josef Woodard)As with other Scandinavian countries plugged into the European cultural ethos, jazz festivals in Finland have a long and rich tradition. The 45-year-old Tampere Jazz Happening boasts status as one of the world’s more adventurous outings, while the huge, 59-year-old Pori Jazz Festival is the nation’s fairly massive mainstream summer fest.
Meanwhile, in the forest-hugging, Helsinki-adjacent city of Espoo, the April Jazz Festival, directed for the past 15 years by Matti Lappalainen, has crossed the implied middle-aged status Rubicon age of 40. In its special edition 40th birthday celebration, which ran April 15–25, the festival proved itself to be a solid, well-balanced musical feast.
On my recent visit to Espoo, I missed the opening weekend appearance of Dee Dee Bridgewater, with the Espoo Big Band, but took in an impressive pageantry of 26 concerts and showcase performances over six days. My April Jazz initiation is complete, and I am a happier man for the experience.
Stylistic and attitudinal directions in jazz were smartly laid out and accounted for, from down-the-middle jazz (Jukkis Uotilla Band, with saxophonist Seamus Blake, UMO Jazz Orchestra with composer/conductor Biana Rantala and Estonian harpejji player Valter Soosalu) to ramparts of the avant garde (saxophonist/composer Esa Pietilä’s Liberty Ship, a fascinating chamber jazz-plus-improv adventure featuring noted, knotty Finnish guitarist Raoul Björkenheim, in the starkly beautiful, Brutalist-styled Tapiola Kirkko).
There were intriguing visits to various global points and items from the “beyond” category, as well. Middle Eastern flavors, in jazz contexts, were tapped with the famed and crowd-appealing oud player Dhafer Youssef, while Wishamali seamlessly blends the jazz-fueled piano and keyboard work of acclaimed Finnish Kari Ikonen with the traditional-modern songs of Jordanian-Palestinian singer Nemat Battah and nimble percussion from Ethiopian-in-Finland Abdissa “Mamba” Assefa. An affecting electro-ambient-jazz recipe is at work in French-Lebanese trombonist Robinson Khoury’s MŸA.
Fusion arrived in various forms and from different global corners, from the enthrallingly taut flamenco-infused work of saxophonist/leader Antonio Lizana’s quintet and the ever-exciting Norwegian tenor dynamo Marius Neset. Neset, who seems to be a reasonable heir to Michael Brecker’s legacy, throws himself artfully into wildly engaging and inventive solos, in compositions fusing optimistic spirit and gleefully tricky meters. Think Steps Ahead with a math degree.
As an addendum to the official festival roster, a contingent of national and international guests were treated to a three-day Finnish Jazz Showcase program, celebrating 100 years of jazz in Finland. That said, this assembly was no history lesson, but rather a showcasing of impressively personal and imaginative variations on what jazz can be. Ironically, the most formula-based music came from the party-ready opening New Orleans-themed Lassy-Eskola Nordic Stew (Nordic meets N’Awlins) and the fusion/prog rock grounding of D.O.P.A, built around the tunes and Jeff Beck-ish guitar work of Timo Kämäräinen.
Also being showcased were three special sites in Espoo, hosting the 10 different sets: EMMA, the contemporary art museum in town; the Hanaholmen, a cultural compound representing Finnish-Swedish cooperation; and the lavishly renovated, ’50s-era movie house The Kino Tapiola.
My favorite showcase set in the Kino came from the “chordless” quartet Superposition, with Linda Fredriksson and Adele Sauros on saxophones, drummer-leader Olavi Louhivuori (also heard in Liberty Ship and Elifantree) and bassist Mikael Saastamoinen. They cook up a pliable and porous sound that somehow reminded me of the old Jack DeJohnette Special Edition lineup with David Murray and Arthur Blythe, with a modern spritz.
The long day in the scenic Hanaholmen included very different sets by significant Finnish pianists: impressionistic veteran Iro Haarla (incidentally, the widow of legendary Finnish drummer Edward Vesala) and her atmospheric Ouranos Ensemble, the evocative non-traditionalist Seppo Kantonen Trio and a fascinating set by Aki Rissanen on the clavichord-like Omniwerk. In his mix, and sometimes in a mix, was music of Couperin, Michael Jackson and bluegrass-colored Ligeti, all in a keeping with a successful mash-up mission.
Two of the strongest sets of the fest arrived with diversely gifted and sometimes mischievous saxophonist Mikko Innanen at the helm, roughly speaking. First came a veritable Nordic/northern European super group with Estonian pianist Kirke Karja, Finnish bassist-of-choice Antti Lötjönen and the cerebral thunder drummer Christian Lillinger from Germany. Innanen and company served up a happy blend of control and abandon, with leavening sauce of dry Finnish humor. This is an altogether potent and malleable collection of players who must go on meeting like this.
On the festival’s final night, Innanen boldly led a multigenerational (and multi-idiomatic) tribute to “100 years of Finnish jazz” in the biggest venue, the Tapiolasali (part of a modernist cultural complex and utopian urban project designed by Finnish architect Arto Sipinen).
When diving into the thicket of a well-stocked jazz festival, I am always on the lookout for a personal discovery, for music previously unknown to me, which grabs at my senses in some fresh way. For me, that ticket was filled by the deliciously unorthodox trio known as Elifantree. Launched in 2007, the trio recently released its seventh album, Fluorescence, breaking a five-year hiatus from its recording life. The two instrumentalists in the equation are among the more adventurous figures on the Finnish jazz scene: drummer Louhivuori and reed player/electronics weaver Pauli Lyytinen (who also played in enchanting short one-man band set in the Finnish Showcase package). But the real showstopping centerpiece of this trio is vocalist Anni Elif, whose shifting array of vocal styles and personae nimbly transcends categories. She switches fluidly between jazz, ambient/mystical, new music experimentation and Nordic art pop. She breaks the rules while making up her own, in artful sync with her trio mates.
The festival closed out on a suitably festive note, to the seductive and tight Afro-Cuban machinations of the Alain Perez y la Orquestra. The band did its steamy thing in the dance-throbbing room of the tram museum called Korjaamo, which had previously played host to the acoustic piano-driven neo-fusion of Tigran Hamasyan.
I clutched my Finnish beverage known as a Long Drink (created for the 1952 Winter Olympics in Helsinki) and danced accordingly. April Jazz @ 40 was a full and satisfying plate of music, smartly packaged. DB
Onstage, Rollins would move about restlessly, thrusting his tenor sax in the air as he blew.
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