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Kalle Kalima

Kalle Kalima (b. 1973 in Helsinki, Finland) has worked with trompeters Tomasz Stanko and Leo Wadada Smith, sax players Juhani Aaltonen, Anthony Braxton, bass players Greg Cohen and Sirone, guitarist Marc Ducret, composers Michael Wertmüller and Simon Stockhausen, pianists Jason Moran and Hans Lüdemann, drummers Jim Black and Tony Allen and singers Andreas Schaerer, Linda Sharrock as well as with Ensemble Resonanz and Jazzanova Djs. 2000-2019 have been busy years for Kalima, touring mostly in Europe but also in Africa, Asia and Americas. Kalima´s latest album “Flying like Eagles” with Knut Reiersrud on guitar, Jim Black on drums and Phil Donkin on bass was released in August 2019 and the record release concert was in the Philharmony of Berlin. Kalima´s Trio “Long Winding Road” with bass player Greg Cohen (Tom Waits, Ornette Coleman) and Max Andrzejewski was touring in 2016 with the “High Noon” album (ACT). The group Klima Kalima with Oliver Steidle and Oliver Potratz won ”Neuer Deutscher Jazzpreis” in 2008 and has released four albums. Kalima is also leading K-18, a Finnish group with quarter-tone accordion that won Jazz-Emma in Finland in 2013. With his solo program “Pentasonic” he plays guitar through electronics into 5 amps surrounding the audience. He is a member of the group “Kuu” with Christian Lillinger, Jelena Kuljic and Frank Möbus which claimed positive resonance with their second album “Lampedusa Lullaby”. He has a trio “Tenors of Kalma” with Jimi Tenor, Finnish underground pop star. Their first album “Electric Willow” was released in early 2015 and brought Kalima “Echo –Jazz” Prize nomination in 2016. Kalima is member of “A Novel of Anomaly”, group of Swiss virtuoso singer Andreas Schaerer. Kalima is a professor of jazz guitar at the university of Lucerne since 2017.

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17
Album Review

Samo Salamon & Friends: Almost Alone Vol 1

Read "Almost Alone Vol 1" reviewed by Glenn Astarita


To keep the train on the track during the Covid lockdowns, artists must think outside the box. Such is the case with this first volume of duets performed by renowned Slovenian guitarist Samo Salamon and European guitarists via the Internet by using web-based meeting programs and file-sharing processes. And besides performing on acoustic and electric guitars, Salamon incorporates a Moog synth on several tracks, largely used for textural backdrops. He also uses the body of his acoustic as a percussion ...

1
Album Review

Samo Salamon: Almost Alone Vol 1

Read "Almost Alone Vol 1" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian


Slovenian guitarist Samo Salamon is as prolific as he is innovative. His restless explorations have resulted in a large, versatile discography that ranges from the orchestral to the free flowing with a variety of ensembles. His 2020 release Almost Alone Vol. 1 is a set of eleven duets each with a different international guitarist. It is the first in a planned three-record series. Every track features a different set of motifs yet the eloquent lyricism of the dialogues ...

4
Album Review

High Noon: High Noon

Read "High Noon" reviewed by Anthony Shaw


Finnish guitarist Kalle Kalima has been making records of a distinctly off the wall hue since he started his professional career over 15 years ago in Helsinki. This orientation took him to study in Berlin where he has been based for the last decade. Working mainly with German musicians, he has seen success in Europe both as a cutting edge instrumentalist and composer, but surprisingly this latest album sees him working specifically with covers of country classics. Focusing particularly on ...

3
Album Review

Kalle Kalima & K-18: Out to Lynch

Read "Out to Lynch" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni


Berlin-based, Finnish guitarist Kalle Kalima continues to project his aural impressions of the world of movies. This time he focuses on the eccentric characters and locations from the films of David Lynch, following his abstractions of director Stanley Kubrick on Some Kubricks of Blood (TUM, 2009). Kalima is not attempting to re-score or rearrange the original soundtracks from these films. Instead, he exposes his feelings while watching these films, in some cases twenty years later, and filters these initial feelings ...

3
Album Review

Kalle Kalima & K-18: Out To Lynch

Read "Out To Lynch" reviewed by Glenn Astarita


Finnish guitarist Kalle Kalima uses the cinema as a platform for riding a wave of abstract impressionism. As this album title intimates, the premise is based on eccentric film director David Lynch's body of work. The band pulls quite a few punches on a per-track basis, spanning cantankerous minimalism, free jazz, and levitating sub-themes amid some abrupt crash-and-burn breakouts. The quartet seldom allows anyone to attain a comfort zone, but this isn't to say that the program is unfocused or ...

384
Album Review

Kalle Kalima: Some Kubricks of Blood

Read "Some Kubricks of Blood" reviewed by Anthony Shaw


From the opening flurry of discordant semitones, the following percussive entrance of saxophone and then guitar, it becomes clear that there is something rather weird and threatening about Some Kubricks of Blood. Much is surely due to the disharmonies and clashes of timbre--grating guitar over accordion gushes--and the abrupt rhythmic collisions, in addition to intentional off-mike squawks and burrs. And then, of course, there is the avowed subject matter: those images and injuries drawn from deep in director Stanley Kubrick's ...

365
Album Review

Kalle Kalima / Ed Schuller / Ernst Bier: Jazz Parasites: Very Early

Read "Jazz Parasites: Very Early" reviewed by Marc Medwin


Parasites is an international trio that has been in existence for over five years. Drummer Ernst Bier and bassist Ed Schuller's long-fostered musical partnership is evident throughout, resulting in an airtight but loosely swinging rhythmic feel, no matter what the context. Similarly, guitarist Kalle Kalima demonstrates his diverse influences while never falling victim to them. He'll introduce a certain flexibility of vibrato or a delicate turn of phrase or change of dynamic that is beholden to none. ...

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Almost Alone Vol 1

Samo Records
2020

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High Noon

ACT Music
2016

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Out to Lynch

TUM Records
2013

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Out To Lynch

TUM Records
2012

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Jazz Parasites: Very...

Jazzwerkstatt Berlin-brandenburg E.v.
2010

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