Beautiful scenery and diverse music fire-up Finland‘s Turku Sea Jazz festival

At this fairly new festival, not everything revolves around the music, around jazz. Jussi Fredriksson observes exactly what is happening around him. And especially what is happening to the Archipelago Sea around his hometown of Turku. Algae are a big problem. The waters and the islands off Turku are beautiful. But even this paradise is now under threat. And so the opening piece of Frederiksson's new trio CD is appropriately called ‘Dead Sea’.

Jussi Frederiksson is not only a jazz pianist and drummer, he is also the head of ‘Jazz City Turku’. In the meantime, the friendly city in southwest Finland, the oldest in the country by the way, is entitled to call itself that. Not only do Fredriksson and his team organise concerts in the city all year round and a jazz cruise between Turku and Stockholm twice a year - Turku is home to the Turku Jazz Festival, the second oldest in Finland, has its own big band, the Turku Jazz Orchestra, and has now brought together four small summer festivals in the region under the name Archipelago Sea Jazz. Three of them take place exclusively on islands. Two, Baltic Jazz and Korpo Sea Jazz, have existed for a long time, two are new additions: Åland Sea Jazz - and Turku Sea Jazz.

And the latter offers the interested public something special. For example, the almost two-hour boat trip through the archipelago to the small island of Seili. There, the Finnish guitarist Teemu Viinikainen first gives a solo concert in the island's small wooden church, creates some beguiling moments with loops and samples, enchants with his version of the old Charlie Mingus classic ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’, but also has some not always so sparkling moments in his playing. Open air in a garden, in beautiful summer weather a little later, the trio PLOP with special guest Juhani ‘Junnu’ Aaltonen enraptured throughout. The flutist and saxophonist is already 87 years old, but shares the wildness, the extremely creative and always surprising improvisational outbursts and the humour of his much younger three colleagues, saxophonist Mikko Innanen, bassist Ville Herrala and drummer Joonas Riippa.    

Lisa Ekdahl (above) Photo by Juha Kurri

The main venue for Turku Sea Jazz this year is an open-air area in front of the Forum Marinum, a maritime and naval museum, about half an hour's very nice walk from Turku city centre, always along the river. There, the Finnish Timo Lassy Trio shows how fresh, independent modern jazz can sound retrospective, but still cutting-edge and fresh, snappy and gripping, but also underpinned with catchy melodies. And a virtuosity that is always nicely integrated into the trio context, despite wild solo excursions by all three musicians. The Dane Ida Nielsen has already plugged in her electric bass for Prince. With her own combo The Funkbots, there is a groovy funk party to close the first evening at Forum Marinum. Many dance, and Ms Nielsen has the funk down, shows off her skills with some deep bass grooves to boot. It's good entertainment, but it doesn't last long.

Of the three singers at the festival, two sing in their mother tongue. Finland's number one jazz voice Aili Ikonen (announced like this on the festival website) can really sing well and colour songs beautifully with her voice and you have to like the singing of Sweden's Lisa Ekdahl, though. Another Finn, Johanna Försti, on the other hand, provides the right festival finale with her soulful, powerful voice and pop hits sung in English, which she sometimes turns very interestingly towards jazz with her trio with Hammond organ. And with the band Sound Tagine of the Finnish trumpeter and bouzouki player Ilkka Arola, who wonderfully bridged the breaks on the big stage with two short sets on a small stage on the last evening, there was an innovative artist to discover who knew how to skilfully cross Middle Eastern melodies with modern jazz sounds. Full of playfulness and always with surprising sound paintings.