Turku Jazz Festival awards a local musician each year for their contribution to local jazz life. This year, the nomination goes to the Turku-born guitarist Vilkka Wahl, who will bring his star-studded quintet to this year’s Turku Jazz Festival to celebrate their debut album.
In 2009, as a part of the 40th anniversary celebrations, the Turku Jazz Festival launched a new tradition to acknowledge a distinguished local musician. Candidates are either young and active rising stars or long-standing jazz veterans, but in both cases having an active career in the South-West Finland is a major criterion for nomination.
This year, the winning artist is guitarist Vilkka Wahl (b. 1978), born in Turku but today based in Wien, Austria. Born to a musical family, Wahl first studied at the local Turku Conservatory and later in Helsinki’s polytechnic Stadia. After an exchange year at the Graz University of Music and Performing Arts, Austria, in 2005, Wahl removed to the city in 2008 to enrol as an MA student at the very same university.
After graduation, he embarked on a career as a freelance musician and guitar teacher at the Vienna Music Institute. The various projects he has been involved with have seen him perform with the likes of John Abercrombie, Ain Agan, Karl-Heinz Mikhl, Heinrich von Kalnein and Stjepko Guti. During his years at Graz, he hosted well-known jam sessions.
In his home country, Wahl has played with some of the finest Finnish jazz musicians, including Severi Pyysalo, Manuel Dunkel, Kasperi Sarikoski and Osmo Ikonen, and the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra. He has also worked as a theatre musician at the Turku City Theatre and been involved in planning the live music programme of the local Café Tiirikkala. His summers Wahl still likes to spend in the coastal area of Turku, enjoying jazz and nature.
The Vilkka Wahl Quintet that we will see on the Turku Jazz Festival stage this August was founded in 2015 in Turku. That year Wahl reunited with the Turku-born jazz legend Severi Pyysalo and the pair teamed up with bassist Teemu Åkerblom and drummer Mikko Arlin to play Wahl’s compositions. They also toured Southern Finland. Initially a quartet, the group got a very special addition to their numbers when the New York-based Slovenian tenor saxophonist Jure Pukl was invited to join its ranks. At the time the group was working on their first album in co-production with the Finnish Broadcasting Company, YLE. The fruits of their labour can be enjoyed at the Turku Jazz Festival on 19 August, when the quintet finally brings out the debut disc, Nebula. When writing the album, Wahl has been inspired by the fundamental questions of life.
Turku Jazz Festival is Finland’s second oldest jazz festival. This year, it will be held on 17-20 August at the Brewery Restaurant Koulu’s yard and at a number of club venues in the centre of Turku. The programme will be out in its entirety in May.
Turku Jazz Artist of the Year 2017: Vilkka Wahl Quintet with Jure Pukl
Sat 19 Aug 2017 at 17:00
Brewery Restaurant Koulu
Eerikinkatu 18, Turku
Vilkka Wahl – guitar
Jure Pukl – sax
Severi Pyysalo – vibraphone
Teemu Åkerblom – bass
Mikko Arlin – drums
www.turkujazz.fi
Picture: Seppo Wahl