✨?Halløj!! SINGLE XIV Terra is OUT!! ✨
Find it on your favourite digital platform: https://orcd.co/xivterra 
The draft of this piece was made already over 2 years ago. It has traveled through various stages from the first intuitive spark, meeting crossroads, and taking many turns. 
Originally the plan was to record the naked nature, ambiance and sounds in Iceland's nature. And as a continuum to my Sonority project, to play with nature with my voice and electronics. 
Just two weeks before my trip, the lockdown hit, causing a chain of changes of plans. But since improvising is part of life and my music, who knows, maybe it was a 'meant to be' situation for this music to become an end the way it ended up to be.  It has, in any case, been a transformative journey for this piece until now. 
????I am thankful and thrilled by the beautiful cover art by @TapaniToivanen , which indicates something disturbingly unnatural,  yet natural landscapes. Just like in my imagination.  Human- and machine-made, at the same time. 
Thank you for your beautiful photos Julie Montauk, Thank you Halvcirkel, Aske Zidore, Nick Martin, Thomas Vang and the planet earth for having me here!
Now, this piece is out of my hands, and all yours!

Working on the theater - compositions,  sound design and performing - with IKI for the play TERROR / IS / ME by Sargun Oshana. On every performance I get amazed of the talented actors and the whole play. Grateful to be contributing!

https://orcd.co/xihumanantitouch

“One of the most impressive figures in the lively North- European improvised music scene. Unique and profound, Aika’s music runs through the freezing lands of Scandinavia, lays down on abstract land where jazz minimalism glazes in the dark stems from and abstract atmosphere that melts into cinematic images, where silence is a pure dialogue between electronics and new dissonances… 
 

 “… The lunar sound of Southern Light, indie Planetary electronics or Phases jazz noisec where David Sylvian’s refined genius is seen in the distance, eager to musically push into unkown territories. Sophisticated and experimental” (Windout. Italia)
 

Sulkunens vokal passer perfekt inn i de sporene hvor hun medvirker, og hennes stemme er nesten som skapt for dette ensemblet. Toldams pianospill er, som alltid, perfekt. En større og mer inderlig lyriker innenfor den nyere jazzen skal man lete en stund etter, og Toivanens bass-spill er originalt og fint, og trekker mye av musikken framover på en strålende måte. Og bakerst sitter kanskje den mest spennende trommeslageren fra Finland, Olavi Louhivuori, og holder det hele sammen på en fin måte. (Salt Peanuts, Jan Granlie)
 

 

 

Amazing to get to play live again!! The Copenhagen Jazz Festival is almost here. I will play the following concerts with different groups and settings. 

2.7. KAHINA ORCHESTRA @ Koncertkirken kl 19:00 
50min piece for 10- musicians by Randi Pontoppidan, and me.

BUY TICKET HERE: https://www.facebook.com/events/526463041812332/?ref=newsfeed 

6.7. SOLO with VISUALS @ Xenon, Huset kl 20:00

BUY TICKET HERE: https://fb.me/e/PuM68Sqy

7.7. IKI Koncert @ Bronshøj Vandtorn kl 19:00 

9.7. IKI MASSES II @ Thorvaldsens Museum kl 19:30 

10.7. IKI MASSES II @ Thorvaldsens Museum kl 19:30 feat. Maria Faust

11.7. IKI MASSES II @ Thorvaldsens Museum kl 19:30 feat. Marilyn 
Mazur     

BUY TICKET TO MASSES II HERE:   https://webshop-historieogkunst.kk.dk/arrangementer/thorvaldsens-museum/thorvaldsen-musikken-iki-masses-ii

HOPE TO SEE YOU! 

There is no such thing as absolute time. The present may be influenced by the future. The two major physics theories of the 19th century, general relativity and quantum physics,  as well as the cosmic movement that emerges between the cosmos and ourselves, have been the cornerstones of inspiration for our debut album 'TILA' with AIKA (=meaning TIME in Finnish). 
 

The seed for this album was a moment of improvisation 14 years ago. We envisioned it would become an album when ‘the time is right'. After some years of waiting for the right time,  we realized that there is no such thing as ‘the right time’.  Because there is no such thing as absolute time… 
 

“The pace we move, and that things move around is, is the result of our own relation to it. Time is made of events, not things. The world is not so much made of stones as of fleeting sounds, or of waves moving through the sea.  A piece of music is an event, not a thing.”   (Rovelli, 2017)
 

Music is time. Time is movement. We are the movement. We are time.
 

BIG THANKS to #OlaviLouhivuori and #SimonToldam who took on this evolving journey. What a dream team!! Thank you to #TapaniToivanen for the joined journey in music and life. You are the best!
 

I thought for a long time, if I was ever going to make another ‘jazz’ album, it had to be with these people.  Vocals are very naked, I use no electronics, there are lyrics and melodies and all!  I guess it became pretty jazz…at least touching upon some corners of it.
 
Thanks to #ThomasVang for the good vibes and wonderful studio! Thanks to #AugustWanngren for committing to the mixing process! Thanks for the great book: ‘The Order of Time’. Carlo Rovelli. 2017.
 
 Have a listen, order the album from me/ vinyl or CD! Let it resonate with the cosmic time and you. 
 
 Available in all the digital platforms! 

 Also in SPOTIFY: 
 https://open.spotify.com/album/5hrZSsfGjKG1WvqT4jAruA?si=12ecDWGlQwO6dBd_tBQjAg
  
 Johanna Elina Sulkunen (Fin/ Dk) - vocal / composition
 Tapani Toivanen (Fin/ Dk) - bass / composition
 Simon Toldam (Dk) - piano / synths / electronics
 Olavi Louhivuori (Fin) - drums
 

 Bandphoto: Andreas Omvik
 Coverphoto: Anders Blomqvist

We have just played 11 school concerts with IKI, and we'll continue the tour next week! How lucky it feels to play again! :)

“Dette er et verk som snarest bør finne veien ut til de store massene ute i Norden og Europa, for en bedre kobling mellom et vokalensemble og instrumentalister, skal man lete lenge etter. “ Jan Granlie

We organized an evening with three concerts at klub Primi/ H15.   First set was an acoustic duo with me + Randi, second a concert with IKI and third concert was a new piece for a band called KAHINA that we wrote together.  We are planning to do this again!

Started recording n my next album!! Such a joy to work with this crew! Strings and horns and  drums.. and also some voice and electronics...;) To be continued.... 

We had a great concert and looking forward to the next adventures! 

It’s so great to be back in Japan!



I recorded parts of my solo album here, and now playing a tour with this project feels like some circles are closing. (While some new ones are opening!)

A challenge facing every contemporary artist is to constantly be able to push the status quo that is either associated with their own work or that is accepted as the cultural norm.

Renewing oneself is the task every artist should, in my opinion, take seriously. I took the chance in this project to reach to the unknown, posing questions instead of finding all the answers.

As a parallel to the task of asking questions as a means of renewal, I have used texts - that are in Zen practice known as Kōans - as materials and a source of inspiration. A Kōan is a paradoxical anecdote or riddle without a solution, used in Zen Buddhism to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and provoke enlightenment. 

Voice belongs to everyone and everyone has access to his or her own voice. Voice is inseparable from the body. The body cannot work without the mind and mind cannot work without the body. We use our voices and bodies as the most natural way to connect with each other.

The human voice has a special status among the different ways of producing sound: it is also used as the primary means of communication through language. Our bodies produce small granules of resonances, microtextures, phonemes, that together form larger entities, syllables, words, and sentences. This collective outwards resonance connects our bodies to collectives and societies.

Voice is private in the way that we may not separate it from the person. Voice is always both private and public.

The close collaboration with the visuals is finding new ways of realizing the concerts as well. And it feels great to get The visuals to follow the musical resonances and the idea of microtextures, fragments, and layers. We are developing our co-operation constantly and every concert is a unique experience where the location is also part of the outcome.

After Japan, we go back to my roots... Finland. There is a great festival We Jazz  where we play on the 4th of December!

TOUR SCHEDULE:

21/11 20000 den-atsu, Tokyo
23/11 Otooto, Tokyo
24/11 Yellow Vision, Tokyo
25/11 Environment Øg, Osaka
26/11 Big Apple, Kobe
27/11 Socrates, Kyoto
4/12 We Jazz Festival, Helsinki

We are so happy to be nominated in two categories for Danish Music Awards!

'The vocal album of the year 2018' and 'A Special Release of the Year 2018'.

We are looking forward to 12th of November at Bremen Theater!

LINK: Nominees for DMA 

"A very fascinating album from an artist who dares to take the step far beyond the established." 

Read the full review: HERE

So glad that the album has been so well received! Looking forward to the next concert at the Copenhagen Jazz Festival on the 11th July! kl 20:00 at Literaturhaus!LINK





“Traditional melody singing is rare, the voice is more like an element from which the multilayered colourful and often dramatic whole. … again the name of Johanna Sulkunen is a guarantee for attractiveness and high quality. “ Pentti Ronkainen, Suomijazz

"Johanna Sulkunen har lavet et album, der er gådefuldt og mystisk. Der er en dragende stemning, hvor Sulkunen formår at fange os ind som lyttere. Ude fra set er det måske bare en omgang avantgardistisk vokaleksperimenteren. Bruger du tiden på projektet og kommer ind i det, så er det her, der sker noget. Et “noget” der ikke kan eller vil eller skal forklares." 
Niels Overgård. Jazznyt

“ Her new found language and manipulated voice are used as a provocative Kōan. Forcing the listener to adopt a fresh, a deep listening-meditative approach, sometimes even dream state of mind to language and voices.” Eyal Hareuveni. Salt Peanuts. “Koan that is recorded partly in Japan, Sulkunen has moved far from her excellent previous two albums... Koan invites the listener to be also a questioner and especially to question a way how to listen." Harri Uusitorppa. Helsingin Sanomat.

Johanna Elina Sulkunen - voice + electronics SOLO

I will release the first album on my SOLO PROJECT 'Sonority' on the 11th Mai 2018 on ILK.
It's only voice and the machines and it is very exciting indeed! I will tell more about this soon!

IKI will release their third album 'ORACLE' on the 23rd of March 2018. The album is produced by Mike Sheridan and we will be playing release concerts starting from March!