Iro Haarla Ouranos Quartet, featuring Aija Puurtinen: Under the Firmament

Finnish pianist Iro Haala has a gift for assembling superb jazz ensembles. Her on-record successes—including Kolibri (TUM Records, 2015) and Vespers (ECM Records, 2011)—are brought together, in part, by "considering the chosen musicians' Individualism and soloistic assurance." Duke Ellington did that. So did Charles Mingus. Forming a combination of different personalities, adept at music and possessing artistic souls, then channeling the collective into a quest for excellence gives the finished product the potential to breathe, to become a living and spiritual entity.

This is what Haarla does. Her small ensembles are idiosyncratic, perhaps odd-sounding to an ear brought up on Art Blakey or Horace Silver or Miles Davis. And if it is odd, it is the best kind of odd—meditative and often haunting, dreamy and spacious enough to allow examinations of the solos, collaborative enough to maintain the mood of the ensemble voice.

This brings us to Under The Firmament, by the Iro Haala Ouranos Ensemble. A "firmament" is defined as "the sky, especially when regarded as a tangible thing."

On an initial listen, the cohesiveness of the group's sound is evident. So is the strength of the individual personalities. It is a quartet, with Haarla on piano. Vocalist Aija Puurtinen sits in on three numbers. On "Deliverance," written by the group's bassist and Haarla's husband, Ulf Krokfors, she sings like a woman possessed, initially under control but soon fraying around the edges, working a hornlike, everywoman elocution interwoven with Jone Takamaki's gritty, breath-of-the-beast reed playing.

The Haarla-penned opener, "On High With Birds Of Passage," is an expansive and mesmerizing tone poem with eyes set on the sky. The same goes for "Northern Lights," Haarla's "La Valle de la Luna," the "Green Comet," "At the Mercy of Air Currents" and "Lost Satellite." The title tune closes the disc. Vocalist Puurtinen sings a dirge; saxophonist Takamaki plays one. They and the band sound as if their metabolisms are linked as they make their music under a night sky filled with stars and planets. Then the singer whispers herself out of existence, ending a remarkable six- minute prayer.

This cohesive album can be—and should be—taken as a whole. It is so different it defies description in its hypnotizing, surreal, dream- state articulation. It is a work created by a band that shares a rare kind of musical DNA. And speaking of DNA, there is a real sharing of that stuff of life: Drummer Aniida Versala is Iro Haarla's daughter, and the daughter of drummer Edward Versala (1945 -1999). She follows in big footsteps, doing it with an unusual verve, not only as an instrumentalist but also as a composer. Her "Lost Satellite," a highlight if one must be mentioned, does indeed evoke images of a complex chuck of errant metal set adrift, tumbling in space, traversing the dark firmament, its multiple facets reflecting the moonlight, turning itself—from an earthbound perspective—into an unfixed star.

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