Pienet ihmiset isot puut | Ilmari Heikinheimo Northern Garden | DANTCHEV:DOMAIN – Jazz-Espa

Jazz-Espa is a rare treat even on an international level: this number of free concerts by such high-level artists in the heart of a city can’t be found anywhere else!

The festival features 17 jazz acts, both experimental styles and traditional sounds.

Wednesday 2 August 2023

13.00 | Pienet ihmiset isot puut
Pienet ihmiset isot puut (“Small humans big trees”) is a jazz quartet performing nature-inspired compositions. The ensemble’s compositions revolve around climate anxiety, sadness over biodiversity loss, and a love for nature. Their musical style is contemporary jazz with influences from Finnish folk music and schlager-style songs. In 2022, the ensemble published a studio live release titled Täällä oli kaunista kerran (It was beautiful here once), which was dedicated to cut-down forests.

Laura Helander – sax, Mikko Antila – piano, Tatu Back – bass, Benjamin Nylund – drums

16.00 | Ilmari Heikinheimo Northern Garden
Often regarded as Finland’s torchbearer of free expression and known for his involvement in several recent groups, drummer Ilmari Heikinheimo makes his composer debut in his first solo project titled Northern Garden, revealing his sensitive and lyrical side. The concert serves as an overture to his solo debut album which is set to be released soon.

Most of the album’s music was composed in late winter 2022 while Heikinheimo was living in Oslo. The composition’s thematic elements and central building blocks draw inspiration from Heikinheimo’s inner dialogue with his father who had passed away a year earlier and to whom the upcoming album is dedicated. Composed with feeling, the new work carries echoes of a life lived, of memories, and of reaching towards the future and into the unknown, all woven together into a retrospective soundscape travelling from childhood to today and beyond.

Ilmari Heikinheimo – drums, percussion, flute, Adele Sauros – tenor and soprano sax, flute, Samuli Mikkonen – piano, Eero Tikkanen – double bass

17.30 | DANTCHEV:DOMAIN
The music of DANTCHEV:DOMAIN combines strong cinematic melodies and tight Bulgarian rhythms with full-bodied improvisations. Founded in 2019, DANTCHEV:DOMAIN showcases their distinct Finnish-Bulgarian groove, performing both in Finland and abroad. Anna Dantchev is a versatile and charismatic vocalist and composer whose songs draw inspiration out of life itself – its light and shadows. Dantchev’s unique singing style, which marries Bulgarian vocal techniques with the sensitivity of jazz, has already received international acclaim. The ensemble has released two albums: Say It (2020, Glomama Music) and The Lions We Are (2022, Glomama Music).

Anna Dantchev – vocals and tupan-drum, Erno Haukkala – trombone, Kenneth Ojutkangas – tuba and guitar, Antti-Pekka Rissanen – drums