By Dave Roberts
One of the great young pianist/composers of our time performed at Bruno's recently but only a dozen people were there to hear him. Admittedly, 29-year-old Mika Pohjola, from Finland but now living in New York, is not exactly a household name. But he certainly deserves to be, at least in jazz households.
Pohjola plays piano with a delicacy and care that is a pleasure to watch and hear. He has a light touch on the keys and expends a minimal amount of energy caressing them, coaxing subtle melodies and motifs out of an imaginative array of thematic materials. He is a pianist well-suited to the intimate confines of Bruno's nightclub.
In an hour-long set that seemed much shorter Pohjola, bassist Todd Sickafoose and drummer Mark Ferber explored classics such as Bill Evans' "Turn out the Stars," Burt Bacharach's "What the World Needs Now" and George Shearing's "Conception," as well as several of Mika Pohjola's sophisticated and evocative originals.
As great a pianist as Pohjola is, he may be an even better composer. His music is adventurous, evocative, intriguing and covers a wide range of styles while never steering too far from jazz. His pieces are frequently quite rhythmically and harmonically sophisticated, featuring unusual time signatures and chord selections, making them some of the tougher challenges many jazz musicians are likely to encounter. But they never become dry, abstract, technical exercises - these pieces are full of life and intrigue. Many of them are impressionistic in the Debussy/Ravel mode. Others are quite simple, such as the lovely ballad "Mood 4:30 am." And others, such as "Young in the '80s," a 10/4 country/punk/jazz tune, and the multi-rhythmic "MikaSonik Theme," adventurously incorporate challenging rhythms with folksy thematic materials in a style reminiscent of Charles Ives, Bela Bartok or Igor Stravinsky.
The Pohjola originals played that night included, "Old Manhattan Tango," "Screen Play," "A Ballad About Something" (which was originally called "A Ballad About Nothing"), "Kids' Song," and the "MikaSonik Theme," a quirky, driving signature tune that manages to explore a variety of unusual rhythms (8/8, Bulgarian 11/8, a 4/4 march) in just over 30 seconds.
With a half-dozen CDs filled with his compositions, Pohjola is steadily accumulating an impressive body of work. If you'd like to check him out, a good start is Mika Pohjola Live at the Blue Note (2000 Change Records), a September 1996 date with Matt Penman on bass and Roberto Dani -- a remarkable concert in which his style was already quite fully formed. The trio is joined by guitarist Mick Goodrick on Pohjola's myths & beliefs (GM Recordings, 1996), and by saxophonist Chris Cheek on On the Move (MikaMusik, 1997) and on Announcement (MikaMusik, 1998). Pohjola shows his skills as an accompanist on a duet recording with singer Johanna Grussner Hur man radar karleken & annat Grussner/Pohjola (YLE, 2000) - although the tunes are in Finnish (I believe) and a translation is not provided, they are quite evocative, reminiscent of early Joni Mitchell. Pohjola has just released Sound of Village (Splasch Records, 2001), a duet of free improvisations with Japanese percussionist Yusuke Yamamoto. And later this year he's set to release MikaSonik.
Pohjola is a major artist who deserves an ECM recording contract and a week-long engagement at Yoshi's the next time he visits the Bay Area. Although neither possibility may be in the works any time soon, his career will reward following closely in the years ahead.
Dave Roberts has been a professional writer for more than a decade in
newspapers, magazines and high-tech. He's a student of jazz piano, and
writing a book, Tips From the Jazz Piano Pros, consisting of interviews with
jazz pianists that focus on the art and craft of playing jazz piano.
If you are a professional jazz pianist or know of one who would be interested
in participating, e-mail him at DaveRobertsJazz@cs.com. Also, if you are a Bay Area (or northern California) jazz musician, let him know what you're up
to: CDs, shows, Web sites, etc.
