Most jazz records are recorded in studios with perfect acoustics. Ours was recorded in a French château surrounded by vineyards. And the acoustics were perfect too.
The atmosphere was as rich and complex as the best wines of the region – an incomparable setting for a jazz session. Morten Lund, Kaisa Mäensivu and I – each an artist in our own right – had never been on stage together before that day. And yet it clicked at that moment. Under the high ceilings of the castle, surrounded by old wine barrels, we reached into the Great American Songbook and pulled out something fresh, vibrant and new.
We love these melodies. They’re like perfect little stories wrapped up in 32 bars. The jazz standards are our roots.
Tag Archive: Iiro Rantala
Four unique top-flight European jazz pianists, each with limitless freedom of expression. Limitless joy too for the audience in the completely full main hall of the Philharmonie Berlin. But perhaps there is also something even more im-portant here: music’s unique power to unite people.
It was this intense magic that brought the Jazz at Berlin Philharmonic series into being. At the first concert in 2012, there were three pianists: Iiro Rantala, Michael Wollny, and Leszek Możdżer. It all started as a one-off experiment, a specially curated jazz concert at the classical music temple, the Philharmonie Berlin. But that was just the start: this unique series of concerts and recordings has gone from strength to strength.
More than a decade later, Rantala, Wollny, and…