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Olavi Louhivuori
Born into a musical family, Olavi Louhivuori grew up in Jyväskylä, Central-Finland, surrounded by music and musicians. His father is a professor at Music Department of the University of Jyväskylä and mother a violinist and music teacher. Everyone of the seven member Louhivuori family plays an instrument. Olavi began studying violin at the age of 4, but changed to cello and piano at the age of 8. He started playing drums at the age of 9 when he was accpeted into the music class of his primary school.
In 1998 Olavi enrolled at the Finnish Music Conservatory of Jyväskylä for 3 years. There he joined numerous different jazz groups, including the Joona Toivanen trio and the Jyväskylä Junior Big Band. Being a familiar face in the local Jazz Bar gave him a perfect opportunity to perform and jam with local and international musicians such as Jukka Perko and Indgrid Jensen, to name but a few. The Joona Toivanen trio opened the jam sessions there every Tuesday night for three years.
In 2002 Olavi moved to Helsinki to start his studies at the prestigeous Sibelius-Academy, where he studied with Jukkis Uotila. It didn´t take long before Olavi found himself working full-time both in Finland and internationally. Winning the competition of the ‘Young Nordic jazz Groups’ three times (Joona Toivanen trio 2000, Ilmiliekki Quartet 2002 and Sun trio 2006) gained him numerous performances around the world including tours in U.S.A, Australia, Asia and Europe.
For the past few years Olavi has been touring the world as a drummer of Tomasz Stanko Quintet. Besides that Louhivuori has performed with internationally acclaimed artists such as Lee Konitz, Anthony Braxton, Marilyn Crispell and Susanne Abbuehl. He has also played with groups such as the finnish UMO Jazz Orchestra and Piirpauke.
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Emma Salokoski with Ilmiliekki: Joulu Joulu Jul
by Anthony Shaw
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 ...
Continue ReadingIlmiliekki Quartet: Ilmiliekki Quartet
by Pat Youngspiel
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 ...
Continue ReadingYelena Eckemoff: Adventures of the Wildflower
by Mark Sullivan
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 ...
Continue ReadingYelena Eckemoff: Adventures of the Wildflower
by Dan McClenaghan
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 ...
Continue ReadingSuperposition: Superposition
by Friedrich Kunzmann
This outing by Helsinki-based jazz group Superposition is as bold as debut records come. In place of catchy melodies, the reeds focus on odd lines composed of small intervals. Instead of comfortable swing and funky shuffles, bass-and snare-drum work up a choppy sweat to wild cymbal blows. Not to mention the unstoppable double-bass fingers, running up and down the frets like a bullet climbing a staircase. Over the span of eight original compositions, Superposition presents an unquenchable thirst for the ...
Continue ReadingYelena Eckemoff: Blooming Tall Phlox
by Mark Sullivan
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 ...
Continue ReadingYelena Eckemoff: Blooming Tall Phlox
by Dan Bilawsky
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 ...
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