Jazz Finland Live

UMO celebrates its 40th anniversary this year and takes a step outside its familiar jazz environs by collaborating with the two songwriters for Fenno-Beninese group Helsinki-Cotonou Ensemble. Look forward to funk jazz and afrobeat rhythms.

Helsinki-Cotonou Ensemble usually plays live as an eight-piece ensemble. Now the two prime movers behind the project, Helsinki-born guitarist Janne Halonen and Beninese singer/percussionist Nöel Saïzonou will join UMO in the summer of 2015. The project debuts at the World Village Festival in Helsinki.

Saïzonou and Halonen have composed music that combines traditional Beninese rhythms with roots in voodoo, afrobeat, jazz and funk – all this arranged for 18-piece orchestra.
– Our cooperation with UMO offers the Helsinki-Cotonou Ensemble a whole set of tools that gives our music yet another new dimension. And our music offers UMO a chance to work with rhythms they rarely play, Janne Halonen, who has played with UMO as a guitarist on occasion, says.
– I’m especially excited to try my hand at arranging a teaditional Beninese brass sound for music weve written for Helsinki-Cotonou Ensemble. UMO makes this possible. This project also highlights the jazzier aspects of our music quite nicely, Halonen says.

The former French colony of Benin has a lot of horn players and orchestras. No small wonder, as music is everywhere, all the time, a part of everyday life as well as celebrations. When the French left in 1960, they left behind a lot of horns, as well as the European sounds they’d taught the people of Benin during their reign. Those sounds mixed with afro and voodoo rhythms gave birth to a unique Beninese brass band tradition. Outside Benin, the best-known representatives of this tradition are Gangbe Brass Band and Fanfare Eyo’nlé.

Free entry! 

Open event