Apart from that I don't think anybody can complain about a lack of stylistic variety on the album: There's baroque, ragtime, bebop and swing to be heard on it, Scandinavian melancholia, ballads with a French character, fusion, smooth jazz and even tango."įor this unique mix of various moods, focused entirely on melodies, Rantala found congenial comrades-in-arms: the delicate Danish drummer Morten Lund, who has proven his extensive understanding of jazz with, for example, Italians like Enrico Rava, Paolo Fresu and Stefano Bollani. That is why that is missing on "my history of jazz". And that with an unprecedented versatility that he explains as follows: "I was never devoted to blues piano or what people call "mainstream jazz". Rantala always impressively demonstrates that he is a talented stylist, one who breaks down styles and reconstitutes them – borne by unrivalled technology. Whether reanimating the romantic jazz tradition in "Americans In Paris" – which itself is based on the German and French Impressionists – or whether breaking down the swingbob rhythmic from hot to modern jazz as in "Bob Hardy" whether he gives his minimalistic answer to the Nordic jazz revolution of recent years in the stirring "Smoothie", which is perhaps the catchiest tune on the album, or whether he makes his contribution to the escapist piano solos of the moment with "What Comes Up, Must Come Down" even when he embraces pop with "Uplift", The five Rantala compositions on “My History of Jazz” are perhaps the hardest to get out of your head. I've always been very open-minded about that." Many people ask me what my influences are, who I like and who I've arranged for myself. "You can listen to the people who were there before you and learn from them. "The great thing about being a musician is that you don't have to invent everything yourself," Rantala says. With "my history of jazz" Rantala places himself at the head of a new pianist generation that liberates itself from the inflated cult of the "all new" and instead returns to build on the old jazz tradition of studying the great inventors of the genre, of admiring them and of using them for one's own sound. This time, great composers find their way into Rantala's kingdom, like George Gershwin ("Liza"), Kurt Weill ("September Song"), Duke Ellington and his valve trombonist Juan Tizol ("Caravan"), Thelonious Monk ("Eronel") and the Swedish cool jazz saxophonist Lars Gullin ("Danny’s Dream"). There too, the Finnish classical composers Jean Sibelius and Pekka Pohjola were of course also among the inspirations, as were the entirely dissimilar jazz piano legends Art Tatum, Erroll Garner and Michel Petrucciani. “My history of jazz" is the logical counterpart to Rantala's ACT debut "Lost Heroes", on which he built a unique personal monument to past musical paragons and kindred spirits – so unique, in fact, that it won him the Echo Jazz and the annual German Record Critics Award, amongst others. A universal concept shown on the five greatly varied improvisations on the Goldberg Variations, upon which Rantala threads the album like a string of pearls. That old discussion has broken out again: What is jazz? Who does it belong to? Where does it begin? The latter of these questions is at least not an issue for the Finnish pianist Iiro Rantala: "Johann Sebastian Bach and his music came into my life when I was six." So it comes as no surprise that Bach ties up his new ACT album "my history of jazz" - Rantala's personal history of the music that captivated him when he was 13 is embedded in the classically rendered aria: "Ever since then I always wanted to become an improviser, composer, stage performer and bandleader".
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