Jazz Articles about Antti Lotjonen

About Antti Lotjonen

Album Review

Yelena Eckemoff: Adventures of the Wildflower

Read "Adventures of the Wildflower" reviewed by Tyran Grillo

by Tyran Grillo
September 12, 2026

Yelena Eckemoff's Adventures of the Wildflower begins beneath the thinnest layer of perception. Its governing question concerns who receives recognition and what can survive being misread. A columbine enters the world as possibility. Decreed a weed, she later flowers beyond that verdict. Eckemoff turns this botanical fable into a meditation on exclusion and hidden continuity. Her piano supplies the narrative intelligence, lucid but never omniscient. Jarmo Saari colors the margins with guitars and theremin, then makes the glass harp speak in ...

Album Review

Aki Rissanen: Imaginary Mountains

Read "Imaginary Mountains" reviewed by Neil Duggan

by Neil Duggan
August 29, 2025

Finnish pianist Aki Rissanen has built an impressive discography through collaborations with artists including Rick Margitza, Dave Liebman and Randy Brecker, contributing to 18 albums as either leader or co-leader. Yet he is perhaps best known for the part he plays in leading one of European jazz's most distinctive piano trios, the Aki Rissanen Trio. The album Imaginary Mountains, the title of which is a nod to the influence of Keith Jarrett's Personal Mountains (ECM, 1989), features jazz ...

Radio & Podcasts

Antti Lötjönen, Trevor Watts, & Adam Pieronczyk

by Maurice Hogue
March 6, 2023

Last episode's theme of interesting bass playing continues into this show with a pair from France (Hubert Dupont & Olivier Lété, Per Zanussi from Norway, Andrew Schiller, and Finland's Antti Lötjönen, but there's plenty of saxophone action from the likes England's Alex Ward & Trevor Watts, Rick Countryman with Interstellar Nao Trio from Mexico, Ivo Perelman, Avram Fefer, Muriel Grossmann from Spain and Poland's Adam Pieronczyk among others. Playlist Avram Fefer Quartet “Show Time" from Juba Lee (Clean ...

Multiple Reviews

Choose Joy

by John Chacona
March 2, 2023

What should music sound like as the world emerges from the musical Ice Age of the pandemic years? An elegiac tone is an inevitable and perhaps necessary acknowledgment of the desolation of those years. Equally valid is an expression of joy and gratitude for the transformative power of music to heal and uplift. In their own way and with their motivations, the nine musicians from three nations represented on these releases reaffirm the unquenchable desire to create and inspire.

Album Review

Emma Salokoski with Ilmiliekki: Joulu Joulu Jul

Read "Joulu Joulu Jul" reviewed by Anthony Shaw

by Anthony Shaw
December 15, 2022

If you are looking for a novel way of approaching the December 2022 festive season, musically speaking, and are not deterred by a mixture of Nordic languages, then this album may appeal. The songs are sung in Swedish and Finnish, and without any accompanying lyric sheet an English speaker might do well to search for lyrics online. Keen observers of the Nordic jazz scene will know the band behind the album from its prominence in the mid 2000s, following victory ...

Album Review

Ilmiliekki Quartet: Ilmiliekki Quartet

Read "Ilmiliekki Quartet" reviewed by Pat Youngspiel

by Pat Youngspiel
February 11, 2022

When opener “Three Queens" kicks off seemingly mid-motion, Verneri Pohjola, Tuomo Prättälä, Antti Lötjönen and Olavi Louhivuori—a foursome going by the name of Ilmiliekki Quartet—sound as though they've already been at it for a while. They're all warmed up, in complete sync and have found a common groove at which they're smoothly tugging and pulling in a united front. There is a stumbling notion to how the piano keys fall from one chord into another, constructing cadences and voicings as ...

Album Review

Yelena Eckemoff: Adventures of the Wildflower

Read "Adventures of the Wildflower" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
July 15, 2021

The last time composer/pianist Yelena Eckemoff recorded in Finland she led a quintet on Blooming Tall Phlox (L&H Production, 2017). The program was devoted to smells, particularly the phlox flower and other scents remembered from childhood. Here she returns to Finland with a sextet (including several returning players, basically the entire rhythm section) and a related concept: the life cycle of a wildflower. The mood of the music is well captured in the smiling band photo on the back of ...