10/28/2013

Juhani Aaltonen Trio - Mother Tongue

 

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

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