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Tuomo Prattala
Emma Salokoski with Ilmiliekki: Joulu Joulu Jul
by Anthony Shaw
If you are looking for a novel way of approaching the December 2022 festive season, musically speaking, and are not deterred by a mixture of Nordic languages, then this album may appeal. The songs are sung in Swedish and Finnish, and without any accompanying lyric sheet an English speaker might do well to search for lyrics online. Keen observers of the Nordic jazz scene will know the band behind the album from its prominence in the mid 2000s, following victory ...
read moreIlmiliekki Quartet: Ilmiliekki Quartet
by Pat Youngspiel
When opener “Three Queens" kicks off seemingly mid-motion, Verneri Pohjola, Tuomo Prättälä, Antti Lötjönen and Olavi Louhivuori—a foursome going by the name of Ilmiliekki Quartet—sound as though they've already been at it for a while. They're all warmed up, in complete sync and have found a common groove at which they're smoothly tugging and pulling in a united front. There is a stumbling notion to how the piano keys fall from one chord into another, constructing cadences and voicings as ...
read moreVerneri Pohjola: The Dead Don't Dream
by Ian Patterson
The photo on the front cover shows a levitating Verneri Pohjola. A rising star? That tag might have been appropriate at the time of Aurora (ACT Music, 2009), but the brilliant subsequent albums Bullhorn (2015) and Pekka (2017), both on Edition Records, confirmed the Finnish trumpeter's arrival at the top table of European jazz. Pohjola's distinctive tone--lyrical yet with a visceral edge--and his melodic improvisations and compositional flare are common to all his albums, though no two sound the same. ...
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