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My Finnish Calendar

Iiro Rantala

My Finnish Calendar

Format: CD
Label: ACT music
UPC: 0614427988225
Catnr: ACT 98822
Release date: 30 August 2019
Buy at PlatoMania
1 CD
Buy at PlatoMania
 
Label
ACT music
UPC
0614427988225
Catalogue number
ACT 98822
Release date
30 August 2019
Album
Artist(s)
Composer(s)
EN

About the album

Iiro Rantala is a jazz chameleon who loves to appear in many guises. The Finnish pianist invariably springs a surprise with the concepts for his albums, particularly those of his solo piano projects. For "My Finnish Calendar", he has turned a new page: this is improvised music but with an extra-musical narrative: from a very personal and Finnish point of view, he has set to music the passing of a complete year in his home country, and he has done it with his typical mixture of melodic inventiveness, melancholy and humour. His well-known technical finesse and mastery, acquired over the years, have been applied here with an unerring instinct for bringing the essential to the fore.

Each piece on this album represents a month of the year, and each also exists as an independent artistic statement. And if the storyline might not always be directly apparent from the music, Rantala has provided explanations and hilarious anecdotes in his liner notes.

"My Finnish Calendar" is Iiro Rantala's third solo album. He has remained true and consistent to the artistic beliefs that shaped both of his previous recordings: "Jazz needs melodies,” he says. “It needs things that people can latch on to." On his ACT debut "Lost Heroes" (2011) Rantala proved his outstanding ability to venerate great predecessors and role models, from Bill Evans, Erroll Garner and Art Tatum to Esbjörn Svensson, Michel Petrucciani and even Luciano Pavarotti. He didn’t copy them, what shone through was his own identity. Then, in 2015 he captivated his audience with his interpretation of John Lennon's music. In "My Working Class Hero", Rantala succeeded in creating an anthem to the great revolutionary of pop, in an incredibly subtle way and in a true jazz spirit. And he has now reinvented himself again, as a researcher observing the Finnish seasons through jazz...

Artist(s)

Iiro Rantala (piano)

Iiro Rantala is 'a natural phenomenon on keys' (German jazz magazine Jazzthing); an all-rounder of whom New York-based pianist and arranger Gil Goldstein quite rightly said: 'Iiro Rantala is a pianistic sensation who makes the strongest case I know to believe in reincarnation, because his pianistic technique and musical sensitivity speak of depths that appear impossible to have been achieved in this lifetime alone'. Up to now, Rantala was mainly associated with the trio Töykeät, one of the weirdest, funniest and most visionary piano trios in international jazz. He sounded out all the possibilities of this formation: Sometimes playing the energetic lion on keys, sometimes the sensitive romantic or the burlesque clown. His playing blasted away all stylistic boundaries and...
more
Iiro Rantala is "a natural phenomenon on keys" (German jazz magazine Jazzthing); an all-rounder of whom New York-based pianist and arranger Gil Goldstein quite rightly said: "Iiro Rantala is a pianistic sensation who makes the strongest case I know to believe in reincarnation, because his pianistic technique and musical sensitivity speak of depths that appear impossible to have been achieved in this lifetime alone". Up to now, Rantala was mainly associated with the trio Töykeät, one of the weirdest, funniest and most visionary piano trios in international jazz. He sounded out all the possibilities of this formation: Sometimes playing the energetic lion on keys, sometimes the sensitive romantic or the burlesque clown. His playing blasted away all stylistic boundaries and was as uncompromised as it was entertaining, but kept together by a magical triangle: his boundless technical ability and his unmistakeable senses of humour and style.
less

Composer(s)

Iiro Rantala (piano)

Iiro Rantala is 'a natural phenomenon on keys' (German jazz magazine Jazzthing); an all-rounder of whom New York-based pianist and arranger Gil Goldstein quite rightly said: 'Iiro Rantala is a pianistic sensation who makes the strongest case I know to believe in reincarnation, because his pianistic technique and musical sensitivity speak of depths that appear impossible to have been achieved in this lifetime alone'. Up to now, Rantala was mainly associated with the trio Töykeät, one of the weirdest, funniest and most visionary piano trios in international jazz. He sounded out all the possibilities of this formation: Sometimes playing the energetic lion on keys, sometimes the sensitive romantic or the burlesque clown. His playing blasted away all stylistic boundaries and...
more
Iiro Rantala is "a natural phenomenon on keys" (German jazz magazine Jazzthing); an all-rounder of whom New York-based pianist and arranger Gil Goldstein quite rightly said: "Iiro Rantala is a pianistic sensation who makes the strongest case I know to believe in reincarnation, because his pianistic technique and musical sensitivity speak of depths that appear impossible to have been achieved in this lifetime alone". Up to now, Rantala was mainly associated with the trio Töykeät, one of the weirdest, funniest and most visionary piano trios in international jazz. He sounded out all the possibilities of this formation: Sometimes playing the energetic lion on keys, sometimes the sensitive romantic or the burlesque clown. His playing blasted away all stylistic boundaries and was as uncompromised as it was entertaining, but kept together by a magical triangle: his boundless technical ability and his unmistakeable senses of humour and style.
less

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