Jazz Articles about Verneri Pohjola

About Verneri Pohjola

Album Review

Finnish multi-instrumentalist Pekka Pohjola was a classically trained pianist and violinist but known best as a bassist in his native country. The proponent of a unique fusion of jazz, progressive rock and classical music, his work had elements of Frank Zappa, King Crimson and Antonín Dvořák, sometimes all within a single composition. Pohjola died while only in his fifties, somewhat distanced from his family by a life on the road. His son, trumpeter Verneri Pohjola, has been building his own ...

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

Verneri Pohjola: Bullhorn

Read "Bullhorn" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
April 8, 2015

Finnish trumpeter Verneri Pohjola has earned his stripes in collaborations with Quintessence, the Ilmiliekki Quartet, UMO--the country's leading big-band--and Black Motor, with whom he recorded the sizzling Rubidium (TUM Records, 2013). It's as a leader, however, with Aurora (ACT Music, 2009)--voted Finish jazz album of the year--and Ancient History (ACT Music, 2012) that he's begun to garner greater international renown. With those two albums, alongside pianist Aki Rissanen and bassist Antti Lötjönen, Pohjola formed the nucleus of his ...

Album Review

Verneri Pohjola: Bullhorn

Read "Bullhorn" reviewed by Roger Farbey

by Roger Farbey
February 6, 2015

Trumpeter Verneri Pohjola's third album as leader manages to succeed on several different levels. The opener, “Another Day" captures the listener's attention with plangent piano chords and a soaring trumpet theme. “Girls Of Costa Rica" is a paean to Miles Davis' “Filles De Kilimanjaro," the first few bars echoing (but not entirely copying) the start of that most famous track, but then departing down a different road, underpinned by an obligato bass line and satisfyingly augmented by Jussi ...

Live Review

Jazz Finland Festival / European Jazz Conference 2014

by Ian Patterson
October 6, 2014

Jazz Finland Festival/European Jazz Conference Hotel Crowne Plaza/Various Venues Helsinki, Finland September 18-21, 2014 When the steamship RMS Andania docked in the port of Helsinki in 1926 it unloaded more than just cargo. The American jazz group the Andania Yankees that disembarked stayed for two months and effectively kick-started jazz in the Finnish capital. Today, Finnish jazz is in rude health and it was the mission of the Finnish Jazz Federation to showcase a ...