Jazz Articles about Verneri Pohjola

About Verneri Pohjola

Album Review

Acclaimed drummer, composer and producer Richard Spaven has forged a distinctive musical identity by blending jazz, drum and bass, electronica and hip hop. His technical fluency has seen him collaborate with a wide range of artists, including Cinematic Orchestra, Flying Lotus and Loyle Carner. Spaven, initially grounded in big band jazz, was heavily influenced by the London club scene, immersing himself in drum and bass, garage, dubstep and other styles. This has evolved into a singular approach that ...

Album Review

Lars Danielsson, John Parricelli and Verneri Pohjola: Trio

by Neil Duggan
November 8, 2024

Château Palmer is a wine estate in Margaux, in south-west France. Those that know about these things rate their wines as among the best anywhere in Bordeaux. If you are going to record a jazz album outside of the recording studio, then a light and airy wood-paneled salon at the château with French windows overlooking the serene estate seems to be an inspired choice. The recording came about as the second part of a project between the German label ACT ...

Album Review

Slowly Rolling Camera: Silver Shadow

Read "Silver Shadow" reviewed by Geno Thackara

by Geno Thackara
July 28, 2024

Apparently you can roll quite a long way in a decade, slowly or not. To jump from Slowly Rolling Camera's self-titled debut (Edition, 2014) to Silver Shadow feels like hearing two different bands entirely. Granted, they switched from vocal songs to all-instrumental pieces along the way, so just about any outfit would sound completely changed. Besides that obvious shift in tone, though, this trio's electro-jazz-hop fusion has also come a long way in itself--and yet to those who might have ...

Album Review

Slowly Rolling Camera: Flow

by Geno Thackara
August 4, 2023

At first glance, it looks like an album they were always destined to make. Natural flow has been one central characteristic of Slowly Rolling Camera since the start. From their beginnings in quasi-trip-hop/jazztronica fusion, through a shift into a picturesque instrumental outfit, they have always been effortlessly fluid and comfortable with a good slow burn. They have seemed to be following a sort of elemental theme as well, with Juniper (Edition, 2018) setting down some earthy roots and Where the ...

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

Espoo Big Band: Blood Red

Read "Blood Red" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
December 29, 2021

If the music on Blood Red, the eleventh album by Finland's world-class Espoo Big Band, sounds more Middle Eastern than Scandinavian, there's a reason for that. It was inspired, writes composer/arranger Mikko Hassinen, by 2006 Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk's book, My Name Is Red, set in sixteenth-century Istanbul. The music “doesn't describe or explain the story or the characters," Hassinen writes. “Rather, it is a reflection of the different feelings evoked by the novel," and its lyric influences are largely ...