Jazz Articles about Antti Lotjonen

About Antti Lotjonen

Album Review

Yelena Eckemoff: Adventures of the Wildflower

Read "Adventures of the Wildflower" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
March 10, 2021

The seeds of pianist-composer Yelena Eckemoff's Adventures Of The Wildflower were planted in 2013, when she traveled to Hollola, Finland, to record Blooming Tall Phlox (L&H Productions, 2017) with a group of young Finnish musicians. Several Eckemoff albums came about after that recording, but the experience with her Finnish friends must have exerted a sort of gravitational pull, and in 2019 she made a return trip to the country to team with vibraphonist Panu Savolainen, bassist Antti Lotjonen and drummer ...

Album Review

Antti Lotjonen Quintet East: ALQE

Read "ALQE" reviewed by Friedrich Kunzmann

by Friedrich Kunzmann
August 7, 2020

Bassist Antti Lötjönen is anything but a small name in the Finnish jazz cosmos. Holding down the deep frequency spectrum in some of the country's most renowned instrumental outfits, such as the electronica-infused jazz trio 3TM or the acoustic Ilmiliekki Quartet, Lötjönen has established a cunning reputation as a sideman leading up to this, his debut release as a leader with the so-called Quintet East. Accordingly high are the expectations of a musician of his caliber—expectations which are more than ...

Album Review

Verneri Pohjola: The Dead Don't Dream

Read "The Dead Don't Dream" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
July 3, 2020

The photo on the front cover shows a levitating Verneri Pohjola. A rising star? That tag might have been appropriate at the time of Aurora (ACT Music, 2009), but the brilliant subsequent albums Bullhorn (2015) and Pekka (2017), both on Edition Records, confirmed the Finnish trumpeter's arrival at the top table of European jazz. Pohjola's distinctive tone--lyrical yet with a visceral edge--and his melodic improvisations and compositional flare are common to all his albums, though no two sound the same. ...

Album Review

Yelena Eckemoff: Blooming Tall Phlox

Read "Blooming Tall Phlox" reviewed by Tyran Grillo

by Tyran Grillo
January 23, 2017

For this quintet outing, pianist and composer Yelena Eckemoff is joined by Verneri Pohjola on trumpet and flugelhorn, Panu Savolainen on vibraphone, Antti Lotjonen on double bass, and Olavi Louhivuori on drums and percussion. Together they move through a sequence of 15 originals that feel less composed than remembered, as though the music were lifted from the air itself and gently given form. What emerges is a cabinet of scents, each one opened with care, each one releasing its own ...

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Album Review

Yelena Eckemoff: Blooming Tall Phlox

Read "Blooming Tall Phlox" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
January 23, 2017

You can look up the phlox flower online: there are 67 species, many of them fragrant. But none of the photographs or botanical classifications will tell you how it smells. For that we have pianist/composer Yelena Eckemoff's musical impressions here, along with a range of other smells recalled from her Russian childhood. When Eckemoff visited Finland and saw how much it reminded her of Russia she decided it was the best place to record an album about her Russian aroma ...

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Album Review

Yelena Eckemoff: Blooming Tall Phlox

Read "Blooming Tall Phlox" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
December 16, 2016

While the art of playing jazz qualifies as a multisensory experience, involving listening, touching, and seeing, it usually doesn't extend so far as to include the sense of smell. But that's not to say that a nose for scents has no place in musical and artistic spheres. If you need convincing, just look at Blooming Tall Phlox. For her tenth album in six years, pianist Yelena Eckemoff uses life and nature's bouquets as her muse. Her memory ...

Album Review

Sun Trio: Time Is Now

by AAJ Italy Staff
January 14, 2010

Con la produzione di questo Sun Trio, la Cam Jazz conferma gli ottimi risultati del suo viaggio di scoperta di giovani talenti nazionali e internazionali attraverso la collana “Debut". Il trio fa parte della “nuova primavera" del jazz finlandese, avviata qualche anno fa dal trombettista Verneri Pohjola con Ilmiliekki e dal batterista Olavi Louhivuori con Odarrang. Il Sun Trio si propone al resto d'Europa mettendo in campo varietà ritmica e timbrica affiancate a sonorità algide e dilatate grazie all'assoluta novità ...