Jazz, and particularly its freer end, is really alive and kicking in Finland at the moment.

One case in point is the Tampere-based New Garden Orchestra, whose brand new debut album Le Depart (Karkia Mistika/NekoRekords) offers seducingly warm and atmospheric music with strong melodies and a sound that stands apart with its Chinese and other eastern hues. The band shares a certain esthetic and spiritual quality with Charlie Haden’s Liberation Orchestra, but imitation never enters the picture.

NGO plays mostly material composed by the band’s leader, multi-instrumentalist Otto Eskelinen, who here concentrates on alto saxophone and synthesizer. Still, there are two interesting covers on the album. The delicately mystical Parting At Kwan Yang is a traditional Chinese folk song, while the beautiful and distinctly European name tune Le Depart comes from the brilliant Polish composer Krzysztof Komeda. The original Golden Boy has a touch of ethio-jazz in it.

You could say NGO’s music is the anti-thesis of the modern turbo-charged information overload. It breathes like mountain air and grabs you with gentle wisdom. The accent is definitely on memorable melodies and purposely rough-hewn texture, but most of all on the immediacy of emotion.

The sound is characterized by the thoughtful combination of Eskelinen’s and tenorist Sami Sippola’s (Tampere’s Black Motor and Voimaryhmä) hornlines and Otto’s brother Konsta’s violin, while rhythm is handled by the killer tandem of drummer Janne Tuomi (Rakka, solo work, etc) and double-bassist Ville Rauhala (Black Motor, Rakka, etc). Kusti Vuorinen is a unique and prolific composer from the Tampere area and he colours the proceedings with trumpet and electric piano.

The Eskelinen brothers come from a folk/world music background, but have since been active mostly in the free jazz scene. Otto partakes also in the percussion/synth-heavy urban rituals of drummer Tatu Rönkkö’s (Elifantree) Dramophone and plays rough and ready avant-blues in singer/guitarist Pharoah Pirttikangas’ band the Kuhmalahti Nubians. Both brothers belong to the ever-changing Astro Can Caravan, which, in its own way, runs with the torch of the great Sun Ra.

Currently Otto’s taste has veered towards older jazz from the first half of the 1900’s and he now names Lester Young as his favourite saxophonist.

- Jussi Niemi