Artist: Juhani Aaltonen Trio
Album: Mother Tongue
Year: 2003
Line-up: Juhani Aaltonen – tenor
saxophone, flute
Ulf Krokfors – bass
Tom Nekljudow - drums
Label: Tum Records
”The music flows so easily among
the three of us that playing together is a constant joy. I hope that
at least of some of that joy is also communicated to the listener
through this recording”
- Juhani Aaltonen
When autumn is coming to an
end with all its' splendid colorful leaves of red, yellow and green
now fallen from the branches and winter is closing in, when you feel
the chill in the air and days are getting darker and shorter and you
seek warmth and light for comfort, I often times find myself in the
mood for some good moody and atmospheric jazz. If you have a tendency
for melancholy like me you might find modern jazz from Scandinavia to
suite your state of mind better than American classics. For over five
decades Norway has been the birth place of many of the most
interesting modern jazz masters such as Jan Garbarek, Arild Andersen,
Terje Rypdal, Ketil Bjørnstad, Tord Gustavsen, Trygve Seim and many
more who intergrate the melancholy, the vast spaces and the silence
of the North to their music. These artists have become house hold
names in the jazz partially for recording for ECM Records. However,
the global jazz public seems to be somewhat unaware that in the
recent past few decades Finland has seen also a rise of creative and
exciting modern jazz musicians and records.
One of the most important
channels to discover new Finnish jazz music for me personally has
been the record label TUM and its' own festival TUMfest. TUM stands
for Todella Uutta Musiikkia (Really New Music) which is a sort of an
inside joke in the Finnish jazz circles for there is a prolific big
band in Finland called UMO which stands for Uuden Musiikin Orkesteri
(Orchestra of New Music). TUM Records is a record company which
focuses on improvised, jazz-based music emphasizing on the free
expression and the own music of the performing artists. One the most
interesting musicians and very personal favorite of mine, who has
been aboard with the label from the very start since 2003, is
saxophone player Juhani Aaltonen.
Juhani Aaltonen (b. 1935) is
a fascinating musical figure to say the least. Largely self-taught as
a musician, Aaltonen began his career as a freelance musician in 1961
and at the same time began his studies at the Sibelius Academy.
However, after only one year's studies Aaltonen quite the academy to
pursue a full-time career as a musician. In the 60's Aaltonen worked
with some of the finest Finnish jazz musicians and composers
including Otto Donner and Edward Wesala and formed the progressive
rock group Tasavallan Presidentti. Since then Aaltonen has been
involved in various projects including playing with Peter Brötzmann
and being one of the founding members of UMO in 1975 in which he
continued playing until 1986. In 2001 a new Finnish jazz ensemble
Suhkan Uhka (also the first record by TUM) was put together and
Juhani Aaltonen was asked to join in. At the time, Aaltonen thought
that his career of playing improvised music was largely over and it
took much persuasion to get him finally on board with Suhkan Uhka.
The project turned out to be a happy coincidence as it brought
Aaltonen together with drummer Tom Nekljudow and bassist Ulf Krokfors
who, after playing for the first time together in Suhkan Uhka,
decided to form a trio together.
Mother Tongue is the first
album of Juhani Aaltonen Trio and second release by TUM Records. The
performances here were recorded live at Kanneltalo in Helsinki on
October 17th, 2002 in a concert part of a tour organized
by Finnish Jazz Federation. Taken into account that the trio had only
played together merely over a year, it is rather astounding how well
these three talented musicians play together – especially when the
music is mostly free improvisation. Aaltonen himself says in the
linear notes that ”from the very first times that we played
together, I knew that this trio was something special. After only a
few performances, we went through that rare transformation from three
musicians just playing together to the three of us playing as a
group, a unit reaching a whole new level of communication. I feel
that this trio truly represents a case of the whole being more than
the sum of its parts.” These words could not be more fitting to
describe this record. I myself have experience attending free
improvisation concerts and practicing the same art myself as a
musician with others and it is a rather difficult and demanding
musical setting. Sometimes the finest musicians and improvisers might
get together but the magic is just not there. Therfore, in the case
of hearing Juhani Aaltonen perform live or on record you truly feel
privileged to witness such seamless interplay between these three
musicians and witness the one aspect of magic of music.
So how is the music itself
of Juhani Aaltonen Trio? The term free improvisation tends to have a
confused identity among players and listeners alike. This genre –
if one can even call it a genre – encompasses so many different
kinds of musicians, too many starting points and attitudes towards
music and too many ideologies and philosophies of what improvisation
really is, that many find it a fallible term to give a complete
description of certain kind of music. A general misconception is that
free improvisation is linked with experimental and avant-garde,
fighting against the conventional musical parameters such as key and
rhythm. At times, it might be just that but not always and certainly
not with Juhani Aaltonen Trio. Even tough Aaltonen has always been
heavily influenced by the likes Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy and John
Coltrane who themselves have been known for their experimental and
avant-garde elements, the music on Mother Tongue is mostly quite
beautiful. Here free improvisation is a musical philosophy granting
the musicians a musical freedom to do something unexpected without
the fear of making ”mistakes” or missing cues. As said earlier,
all of the three musicians are highly prolific and talented in their
own right. The style, and particularly the sound of tenor saxophone,
of Aaltonen is instantly recognisable and unique. It has very
organic, soft and warm feeling in it. Also, the flute playing on
Reflection is something truly haunting and mesmerising. This theme is
also present for the rest of the record: a certain spirituality which
is created by the intimacy of the three musicians who are in a
constant dialogue with each other with music as their mother tongue.
I feel that I have praised
this record already than enough. If you even remotely like jazz or
improvised music, Mother Tongue is an essential and a must-have
record in our record collection.
You can listen to the first
track Lullaby on the label's internet page:
Written
by Παναγιωτιης
