Espoo Big Band: Blood Red

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 Persian and Arabian.

Apart from its Middle Eastern temperament and rhythms, an air of mystery and foreboding enfolds each of the album's half-dozen themes, enhanced at times by unusual special effects, courtesy of Hassinen (who also handled the electronics). Espoo enlisted Verneri Pohjola as trumpet soloist, and it is he who sets the mood on the solemn opener, "I, Satan." Pohjola solos with alto saxophonist Petri Puolitaival and drummer Rami Eskelinen on the aptly named "Istanbul," with guitarist Jarmo Saarvi on the shadowy "Siro Efendi (I am a Corpse)." "I am Called Kara/I, Sekure," the album's longest track at more than fifteen minutes, offers more of the same, heating up midstream for a vigorous solo by tenor Manuel Dunkel before reassuming its chilly persona for even-tempered statements by Pohjola and pianist Lenni-Kalle Taipale.

Pohjola has the stage and spotlight to himself on "Blood Red," whose dark and ethereal temper lightens somewhat for Taipale's soft piano, Hassinen's percussion and Pohjola's crackling solo before the ensemble lends its powerful voice and Taipale adds a few choice notes to help wrap the package. Comparatively speaking, the album's last number, "I am a Gold Coin," is also its flag-waver. Not really, but at least the tempo is martial instead of funereal. Solos are by Pohjola, alto Ari Jokelainen and bassist Vesa Ojaniemi.

Blood Red is for listeners whose ears and minds are attuned to the scholastic and abstract; those who are partial to big-band music that is forceful and swinging should look elsewhere. For what it is, well done.