Jazz Finland Live

LUCIA CADOTSCH - SPEAK LOW (CH/SE)
Lucia Cadotsch - vocal
Petter Eldh - double bass
Otis Sansjö - tenor saxophone

Take a bunch of evergreens á la Strange Fruit, Ain’t Got No, I Got Life and Moon River and treat them with a concept that is totally today, without electricity or electronics and always starting from the soul and the meaning of the song. The end result is timeless. Call it acoustic retro-futurism.

Die Zeit recognizes the Berlin-based Swiss singer as “one of the most important voices for the resurrection of jazz melody beyond tired scripts and singer-songwriter clichés”. Cadotsch has done, among other things, dada-bluegrass with The Yellow Bird and modernized big band swing with The Lucerne Jazz Orchestra, but on the new album Speak Low jumps once more to fresh territory with two formidable Swedes, bassist Petter Eldh(Django Bates, Amok Amor, etc) and tenorist Otis Sandsjö (Farvel, Gothenburg Gadjos, etc).

Free entry.

NIK BÄRTSCH'S MOBILE (CH)
Nik Bärtsch - piano, composition
Sha - bass clarinet, contrabass clarinet
Kaspar Rast - drums, percussion
Nicolas Stocker - drums, tuned percussion

Hardly anything could be further away from the traditional ”theme-solos-theme” jazz structure than Nik Bärtsch’s Mobile. The Swiss pianist’s holistically minimalistic thinking charmed the audience, when he visited Happening with his electric ensemble Ronin. Founded already in 1997, Mobile is a totally acoustic quartet that plays “ritual groove music”. That apt description is also the name of the band’s new album.

Born in Zurich in 1971, Bärtsch took piano and percussion lessons early on continuing his studies at the city’s Music University. At the same time he played “everything from fusion to free funk and all kinds of extroverted jazz”. The lure of the latter diminished, when Nik got into John Cage’s and Morton Feldman’s musical ideas. That’s why Mobile nits a slowly developing and quite meditational polyrhythmic mat, the charge of which can reach rather dramatic heights.

NEW ZION WITH HAMID DRAKE (US)
Jamie Saft - piano, Fender Rhodes, Hammond Organ
Brad Jones - electric bass
Hamid Drake - drums, percussion

This New York threesome does an uplifting synthesis of Jamaican dub and the spiritual jazz of the 70’s. The ingredients merge perfectly and less is indeed more. No showing off or intellectual dilly-dallying, but straight to the very soul of the music. Think King Tubby meeting Randy Weston.

Pianist Jamie Saft has composed a lot for the movies and collaborated, among others, with John Zorn, Laurie Anderson, Marc Ribot and Iggy Pop. Double bassist Brad Jones is also Zorn’s and Ribot’s man, as well as Ornette Coleman’s, Elvis Costello’s and Elvin Jones’, to name a few. In Tampere, the band's drummer will be Hamid Drake, who has impressed the Happening audience many times with his awesome understanding of reggae, African and Indian music and jazz (Don Cherry, Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders, etc).

DHAFER YOUSSEF "DIWAN OF BEAUTY AND ODD" (TN/US)
Dhafer Youssef - oud, vocal
Aaron Parks - piano
Matt Brewer - bass
Justin Faulkner - drums

”The most important thing in music for me is the groove. It is a sign of life,” says Tunisian oud player/singer, who now is based in New York, Vienna and Paris, and adds about his Arabic lute that “the oud is in straight connection to my heart”. It certainly feels like that, when Dhafer Youssef plays and sings.

Crossing different power lines creates special energy. In Dhafer’s music the North African and Arabic tradition wrap around jazz and the groove is the connecting thing. It doesn’t matter that his time signatures are pretty weird from a Western angle, because they are not intellectual experiments, but stem from a really long dancing tradition. Youssef has collaborated, among others, with Paolo Fresu, Wayne Shorter and Norwegian jazz musicians and made eight albums as a leader, the latest being the much-praised Diwan of Beauty and Odd.

Tickets 40/30 €

Open event