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
6.7. SOLO with VISUALS @ Xenon, Huset kl 20:00
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
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 Olavi Louhivuori and Simon Toldam who took on this evolving journey. What a dream team!! Thank you Tapani Toivanen for the joined journey in music and life.
Thanks to Thomas Vang for the good vibes and wonderful studio! Thanks to August Wanngren for committing to the mixing process! Thanks for the great book: ‘The Order of Time’. Carlo Rovelli. 2017.
Have a listen, and order the album from me/ vinyl or CD! Let it resonate with the cosmic time and you.
Available on all digital platforms!
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! 🙂
Værket Kahina er inspireret og navngivet efter den arabiske kriger-dronning, Kahina, et navn der også betyder “sandsigerske” og “heks”. Således vil dette værk være en hyldest til Kahinas magiske kræfter og kvaliteter ved at oversætte dem til musik. Lige så vil modsætningerne dominans/modstand, mandlig/kvindelig og profan/sekulær være genstand for Pontoppidan og Sulkunens kompositoriske undersøgelser og improvisationer med Kahina Orchestra: 10 hverdagskrigere.
På finsk betyder 'Kahina' rusten eller hvinende lyd, der appellerer til de to komponisters hver især elektro-akustiske praksisser, hvor arbejdet med lyd baseres på en helt særlig opmærksomhed over for detaljen.
Sulkunen og Pontoppidans individuelle praksisser er kendetegnede ved at udforske stemmens mange facetter og virkemidler i gennem maskiner som modular synthesizere, loop-pedaler og effektpedaler. Kompositionen til Kahina Orchestra vil være karakteristisk ved ikke at benytte sig af disse vanlige elektroniske hjælpemidler. I stedet vil komponisterne benytte stemmer og instrumenters naturlige effekt og funktion med kompositionsformer, som Sulkunen og Pontoppidan har udviklet igennem maskiner.
Kompositionen vil tage lytteren på en vibrerende rejse gennem musikernes individuelle udfoldelses-spektrum, hvorfor soloer vil boble ind og ud af det fælles værk.
Alt i alt vil værket af Sulkunen og Pontoppidan med Kahina Orchestra tage publikum med på en intim udforskning af musikalsk råstof, der lader musikere og lyttere flyde sammen til én organisme i det levende soundscape.
I februar 2020 havde værket sin debut på Klub Primi under Vinterjazz og blev anmeldt bade i Politiken med fem hjerter og en strålende anmeldelse i SaltPeanuts.
”Jeg tog mig selv i at svaje fra side til side, forført af det smukke lydbillede, mens koret messede, og hårene rejste sig på mine arme…. Infernalsk eksplosion af lyd”. David A.Dyrholm Nielsen/ POLITIKEN ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
“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/ SALT PEANUTS
Orkesteret er fornyligt sammensat af stærke kvindelige profiler inden for improvisationsmusik med ønsket om i fremtiden at løfte genren til nye højder.
An evening with three concerts at klub Primi/ H15. The first set was an acoustic duo with me + Randi, the second, was a concert with IKI and the third concert was a new piece for a band called KAHINA that was composed by me and Randi Pontoppidan.
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....
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
