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Teppo Mäkynen
Aki Rissanen: Imaginary Mountains
by Neil Duggan
Finnish pianist Aki Rissanen has built an impressive discography through collaborations with artists including Rick Margitza, Dave Liebman and Randy Brecker, contributing to 18 albums as either leader or co-leader. Yet he is perhaps best known for the part he plays in leading one of European jazz's most distinctive piano trios, the Aki Rissanen Trio. The album Imaginary Mountains, the title of which is a nod to the influence of Keith Jarrett's Personal Mountains (ECM, 1989), features jazz ...
Continue ReadingNicola Conte: Umoja
by Chris May
Nicola Conte continues on his journey from acid-jazz bohemian to spiritual-jazz sophisticate with this immaculately hip album, fronted on half of its tracks by London-based soul-jazz divas Zara McFarlane and Bridgette Amofah. Conte began his trajectory with the acid-jazz template Jet Sounds (Schema, 2000), boosted it with Jet Sounds Revisited (Schema, 2002) and, after a brief post-hard-bop detour with Other Directions (Blue Note, 2004), began the spiritual-jazz ascent which has in 2023 reached its new, lofty apogee with ...
Continue ReadingTimo Lassy and Teppo Mäkynen: Live Recordings 2019-2020
by Friedrich Kunzmann
The Finnish pairing of Timo Lassy and Teppo Mäkynen belongs to the kind of collaborations where one really doesn't know what to expect next, but that whatever it is, it's bound to be quite extraordinary. Both respected leaders in their own right and busy musicians in contexts that reach far beyond the boundaries of jazz, the two appear to be at their best when performing together. This collection of live material, recorded at We Jazz Festival, Porvoo Jazz Festival and ...
Continue ReadingNicola Conte & Gianluca Petrella: People Need People
by Chris May
For over twenty years, the Italian producer, composer and guitarist Nicola Conte has pursued a resolutely independent path in jazz and jazz-related music. The Schema label, with whom he has almost exclusively partnered since his breakthrough album, 2000's acid-jazz masterpiece Jet Sounds, is based in the fashion-centric northern city of Milan. But Conte nearly always records at Sorisso Studio in his hometown, Bari, a seaport on the heel of Italy's boot on the country's southern Adriatic coast. This off-the-beaten-track location ...
Continue Reading3TM: Form
by Anthony Shaw
Teppo Mäkynen has been playing the Scandinavian jazz circuit for well over 20 years, typically as the drummer in the company of the Five Corners Quintet (which itself grew out of Nuspirit Helsinki), where he also partnered the featured bassist here, Antti Lötjönen. In this line up he was playing a type of post-bop acoustic jazz, but with an emphasis on danceability. This latest album is something of a return to an earlier interest in electronica (hear 2003 released Smelly ...
Continue ReadingThe Five Corners Quintet: Chasin' The Jazz Gone By
by Budd Kopman
Chasin' The Jazz Gone By is the product of producer Tuomas Kallio, who wanted to recreate, using both analog and digital equipment, the sound and the visceral coolness of jazz from the 1950s and 1960s, which means the Blue Note sound of hard bop. And make no mistake, this record is very, very cool, deeply enjoyable in an almost time-warp way. The Five Corners Quintet actually exists in two forms, live and recorded. The live group routinely ...
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Music
Building You, Building Me
From: Upon First ImpressionBy Teppo Mäkynen
