Joona Toivanen Trio - Both Only (February 25, 2022 We Jazz Records)

Joona Toivanen Trio makes their We Jazz Records debut with their new album "Both Only", out 25 Feb 2022. A landmark work for the long standing group, the album showcases a new sound for the band, trekking deep into new ideas for an acoustic jazz piano trio. Since their formation as teenagers in mid-1990's, the trio of pianist Joona Toivanen, bassist Tapani Toivanen and drummer Olavi Louhivuori (of Superposition, Ilmiliekki Quartet and Linda Fredriksson "Juniper") has developed their remarkably coherent band sound step by step, touring the world over. Nowadays, the trio is geographically split between Gothenburg, Sweden (Joona), Copenhagen, Denmark (Tapani), and Helsinki, Finland (Olavi), but the unit has never sounded so together as one, and as adventurous as on "Both Only".

"Both Only" by Joona Toivanen Trio is a cocoon, a welcoming shelter of sound that opens up naturally for the listener to inhabit. The album is moody and introspective, even dark at times, but by the time you get to the closing track, "This and This", you'll likely notice something hopeful brewing up. This is not music dealing with nostalgia or a world lost. Instead, it's a body of work with delicate dynamics, taking a minute just to listen and to look inwards to learn something, to move forward.

The first single "Enlightened" is perhaps the most traditional piece on the album, yet it flows like a vessel beyond genre, conveying a mood, a feeling and an idea. Listen to how the piano, bass and drums discuss, how the groove moves with the instruments having their clear roles but also supporting each other and documenting a musical aging process exactly as that of a quality bottle of red wine. As a song like "Direction" proves, the melody is there all the way, yet there is nothing obvious about how it's carried by the trio. Things remain surprising, fresh and moving at all times. "Except For" keeps its intensity, while nearly erupting into a full on 4-to-the-floor banger. Nearly! The key here is how the energy sustains itself, building the intensity within the music.

"Both Only" is a powerful statement from a band ready to renew itself time and again, and one willing to do it slowly, outside of the hype. This process makes the impact enduring, nuanced and lovely.

WJLP37 Joona Toivanen Trio "Both Only" is available on CD, digi and vinyl as a black vinyl edition and as a LP+7" bundle also including WJ0716 "Except For (7" Edit)" / "Keyboard Study No. 2". 

1. Both Only

2. Enlightened

3. Acceptance

4. Direction

5. Faculties

6. Of Profession

7. In Place

8. Except For

9. This and This

Joona Toivanen, piano / Tapani Toivanen, bass / Olavi Louhivuori, drums

Produced by Joona Toivanen & Matti Nives

Recorded at Studio Epidemin by Johannes Lundberg

Mixed and mastered by Petter Eriksson at Studio Folkhemmet

Photography by Joona Toivanen

Artist photos by Juho Luukkainen

Design by Matti Nives

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Ilmiliekki Quartet - Ilmiliekki Quartet (February 11, 2022 We Jazz Records)

Ilmiliekki Quartet from Helsinki return with their new self-titled album on We Jazz Records on 11 February 2022. The group, including Verneri Pohjola (trumpet), Tuomo Prättälä (piano), Antti Lötjönen (bass) and Olavi Louhivuori (drums) is a mainstay in the Finnish scene and the band has been steadily developing their sound for nearly two decades now. It could be said that the group's musicians, each also a solo artist of note these days, has grown with and through performing together with this regularly working quartet. Ilmiliekki Quartet's music has a song-like melodic quality, which pairs naturally with their often freeform search for new musical landscapes.

As testament of Ilmiliekki Quartet being a Band with a capital B, the songs on the new album come from each of the four members. As before, the band also takes a borrowed tune in for a loving rendition, this time tackling "Aila" by the Finnish dream pop group Karina. All in all, there's a deep, moody element to the music, yet at the same time, their sound flows with remarkable ease and lightness of touch. This brings out a wide range of color in their music, which is easy to fall in love with.

1. Three Queens

2. Sgr A*

3. Aila

4. Follow the Damn Breadcrumbs

5. Night Song

6. Kaleidoscopesque

Verneri Pohjola, trumpet

Tuomo Prättälä, piano

Antti Lötjönen, bass

Olavi Louhivuori, drums

"Three Queens" composed by A. Lötjönen, "Sgr A*" & "Kaleidoscopesque" composed by T. Prättälä, "Follow the Damn Breadcrumbs" composed by V. Pohjola, "Night Song" composed by O. Louhivuori, "Aila" composed by H. Tikkanen, K. Mäkiranta [Karina]

Arranged by Ilmiliekki Quartet

Recorded at Kallio-kuninkala, Järvenpää, Finland on 25.–27. Jan 2021

Recorded by Markus Bonsdorff

Mixed & mastered by Tommi Vainikainen

Design by Matti Nives

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Yelena Eckemoff - Adventures of the Wildflower (March 2021)

Pianist-composer Yelena Eckemoff will release her most elaborate and ambitious musical work yet with ‘Adventures of the Wildflower’, on 19 March on the label L&H Productions. As its title suggests, the double album is the story of a life, from birth to death (and rebirth), of an anthropomorphic columbine flower. Its story is told through the inspired work of Eckemoff and a Finnish ensemble that includes saxophonist Jukka Perko, multi-instrumentalist Jarmo Saari, vibraphonist Panu Savolainen, bassist Antti Lötjönen, and drummer-percussionist Olavi Louhivuori.

Yelena Eckemoff was born in Moscow. In her twenties, she found herself drawn to jazz—at a time when the music, or at least recordings of it, were a rare commodity in the then-Soviet Union. Yet an appearance by Dave Brubeck behind the Iron Curtain reinforced her newfound love of the music and shaped her creative path thenceforth.

That path turned out to run through the United States, where Eckemoff immigrated in 1991 and settled in North Carolina. Now ensconced in the country that gave birth to jazz, she went in search of players who could do justice to her intricate ideas.

The search was a long and sometimes frustrating one, but it paid off when she was able to work with the likes of bassist Mads Vinding and drummer Peter Erskine on her 2010 album Cold Sun. Later collaborators have included projects with Mark Turner, Joe Locke, Ralph Alessi, Billy Hart, Chris Potter, Adam Rogers, Joey Baron, Arild Andersen, and Jon Christensen, the great Norwegian drummer whose final recording was on Eckemoff’s 2020 release Nocturnal Animals.

Having previously worked with Savolainen, Lötjönen and Louhivuori on her 2017 album, Blooming Tall Phlox (inspired by nature’s smells), she was eager to return to Helsinki to record with them again. That she did in summer of 2019 (before the onset of the pandemic), with the addition of two highly regarded Finns: guitarist Saari and saxophonist Jukka Perko, who took a relay baton from trumpeter Verneri Pohjola.

Long a conceptualist, Eckemoff has previously tended to craft albums of thematically linked but discrete pieces. Adventures of the Wildflower, however, functions as a single narrative. The flower—aptly named Columbine—undertakes a vivid journey, growing from baby to mature plant as she observes from her garden spot the whirl of nature and of life, plant and animal, around her. She even learns to communicate with her garden mates, a real phenomenon that inspired Eckemoff to create the album when she read about it in a magazine.

“I was intrigued to learn that plants communicate with each other through the air, by releasing odorous chemicals, and through the soil, by secreting soluble chemicals,” she says. “Such communal life sparked my imagination. I started to envision how a single plant would feel being part of such an interconnected community and how it would react to its neighbors who lived next to it. Soon I had a kernel of an idea about a wildflower.”

Eckemoff supplements her original music with an 18-part narrative poem (one part for each composition) that tells Columbine’s story. While nuanced, the narrative is built on an earnest simplicity, like a children’s story. The music, on the other hand, is much more complex. The multiple levels of melody in “Home by the Fence” or “Children Playing with Seed Pods” are sumptuous feasts for both the ear and the intellect, while pieces like “Chickens,” “Butterflies,” and “Another Winter” are filled with experimental, even psychedelic, textures.

Credit for these soundscapes must go as well to the musicians who work with Eckemoff. The sounds Saari conjures from his guitars, theremin, and glass harp lend the music a unique palette, augmented by the bold, unconventional playing of Perko, Savolainen, Lötjönen, and Louhivuori. “They were fearless in approaching my extensive lead sheets,” the pianist affirms. In Adventures of the Wildflower that fearlessness has, like Columbine, blossomed into a splendid and very alive specimen of its own.

With Adventures of the Wildflower, Eckemoff wanted to make an offering of positivity to her adopted country. “I was moved to make this record as my answer to our turbulent times,” she says. “I believe that nothing is more important than for all earthly beings to find a way to live together peacefully, next to each other in the same community. Characters of my story may have disagreements with each other, but in the end, they always find a way to coexist together on the same plot of land.”

Disc 1

1. "In The Ground"

2. "Germination"

3. "Weeding The Garden"

4. "Dos Chasing A Mouse"

5. "Rain"

6. "Hoome By The Fence"

7. "Chickens"

8. "Drought"

9. "Thundershower"

Disc 2

1. "Winter Slamber"

2. "Waking Up In The Spring"

3. "Buds & Flowers"

4. "Butterflies"

5. "Hummingbirds"

6. "Children Playing With Seed Pods"

7. "Dying"

8. "Another Winter"

9. "Baby Columbines"

Yelena Eckemoff - piano and composition

Jarmo Saari - guitars, theremin, glass harp

Jukka Perko - saxophones

Panu Savolainen - vibraphone

Antti Lotjonen - double bass

Olavi Louhivuori - drums and percussion

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SkyDive Trio- Sun Sparkle (HUBRO MUSIC 2018)

Olavi Louhivuori is a wonderful, sparkling Finnish drummer and percussionist with high energy and a real, positive vibe to his playing, inviting and challenging his fellow musicians to stretch for the utmost of creativity and musicality.

He has studied drums and composition at the Sibelius Academy. He has received the “Young Nordic Jazz Group” award three times with three different bands: the Joona Toivanen Trio, the Ilmilekki Quartet and the Sun Trio.

Olavi has played and toured extensively with the polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko was well as Anthony Braxton, Marilyn Crispell, Susanne Abbuehl, Kenny Wheeler and. He has releases several album with his own bands and under his own name and received the Finnish Emma Award for Oddarang in 2007.

Olavi also composed a drum-concerto for a full symphony orchestra with himself as a featured soloist.

Thomas T Dahl, guitar

Olavi Louhivuori, drums

Mats Eilertsen, bass

Tour

7. Feb Tromsø Jazzklubb, Norway

8. Feb Hamar Jazzklubb, Norway

9. Feb AdLib Jazzklubb, Bodø, Norway

25. May Nattjazz, Bergen, Norway

Guitarist Thomas T. Dahl studied at the Trondheim Conservatory of Music and made his breakthrough with the prize-winning band Krøyt, featuring vocalist Kristin Asbjørnsen. He has an amazing instrumental capacity, equally at home in various styles and genres, chordal structures, sonic cinematic landscapes and more modern pop/rock-oriented projects really using the full potential of his guitar, the rich full string sound combined with tasty drops of electronic treatments. He writes beautiful, intriguing compositions, featured on Sun Moee.

Thomas has released albums with the band BMX with Per Jørgensen, Dingobats with Eirik Hegdal, and has collaborated with Erlend Skomsvoll, Jon Balke, Hilmar Jensson, Nils-Olav Johansen, Jim Beard, John Inderberg and produced Highasakites debut album. He is also associate professor at the Griegacademy in Bergen.

Mats Eilertsen, from Trondheim, Norway, has a special warm and lyrical way of treating the bass, being steady and experimental at the same time, bringing it all together and yet showing openness, willingness, and constantly searching for new sounds.

He is a very active and productive musician, a and has over the years appeared on albums by ECM-associated bands and artists like Tord Gustavsen Ensemble, the Source, Wolfert Brederode Quartet, and Parish, as well as Håkon Kornstad Trio, Food with UK saxophonist Iain Ballamy, Jacob Young Band, Solveig Slettahjell’s Slow Motion Orchestra and Håvard Wiik Trio.

He has released several albums in his own name on the Hubro-label and also made a commissioned work, Rubicon, for a 7-piece ensemble at the VossaJazz-festival in 2014.

He has also had the opportunity of performing with international stars such as Pat Metheney, Joshua Redman, Lee Konitz, Bobo Stenson, Kenny Wheeler, Tomasz Stanko, and participated on nearly 100 albums by now.

Olavi Louhivuori is a wonderful, sparkling Finnish drummer and percussionist with high energy and a real, positive vibe to his playing, inviting and challenging his fellow musicians to stretch for the utmost of creativity and musicality.

He has studied drums and composition at the Sibelius Academy. He has received the “Young Nordic Jazz Group” award three times with three different bands: the Joona Toivanen Trio, the Ilmilekki Quartet and the Sun Trio.

Olavi has played and toured extensively with the polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko was well as Anthony Braxton, Marilyn Crispell, Susanne Abbuehl, Kenny Wheeler and. He has releases several album with his own bands and under his own name and received the Finnish Emma Award for Oddarang in 2007.

Olavi also composed a drum-concerto for a full symphony orchestra with himself as a featured soloist.