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Written in fRoots issue 331/332, 2011


JOHANNA JUHOLA
Fantasiatango

Texicalli TEXCD 106 (2010)

TANGO-ORKESTERI UNTO
Kylmä Rakkaus – Cold Love

ARC EUCD 2281 (2010)

LEPISTÖ & LEHTI
Helsinki

Aito AICD 012 (2008)

I’ve enthused about Finnish accordionist Johanna Juhola a fair bit recently, in reviewing her albums with Timo Alakotila, Spontaani Vire and Pekka Kuusisto and seeing her reliably classy and quirky live shows, most recently a very elegant set as a member of Tango-Orkesteri Unto at Helsinki’s big and delightful World Village free festival.
     Fantasiatango, which took a while to arrive for review and has already spent a couple of months climbing up the European World Music top 20, is her latest album, and it features several of her band involvements: the Johanna Juhola Trio (with guitarist Roope Aarnio plus programmer-producer Tuomas Norvio), the duo with pianist Milla Viljamaa, and the quartet Johanna Juhola Reaktori (with Norvio, Viljamaa and bassist Sara Puljula).
     When Finnish accordionists are mentioned, the names Maria Kalaniemi and Kimmo Pohjonen always come up. Juhola shares with both of them a background at Sibelius Academy folk music department, and the influence of Finnish folk music in their work. But she takes her own path, combining her free-bass and chord-bass chromatic button accordions, mouth-blown claviola, toy piano and glockenspiel with Norvio’s live electronics in surging melodic compositions in which one can hear the influence of soulful, direct Finnish and complex Argentinian tango, Timo Alakotila’s chord-shifting, lyrical writing style and other shapes of Finnish folk music. In Happihumppa even the stolid populist polka-style humppa is alluded to, fused with Finland’s other de facto national dance tango and treated to fine fiddling by classical master and electro-fiddle doyen Pekka Kuusisto.
     We’ve certainly come a long way since the time when accordions seemed, to me anyway, to be brutal instruments of musical stodge, far removed from smartness or stylishness. (Actually - to qualify that - much of that avoidance-reaction was to piano-accordions, though some fine perceptive players have also rescued them from the mire; button accordions have in the main seemed somewhat distanced from the stomach-Steinway’s excesses of bludgeoning insensitivity).
     
     www.texicalli.net, www.johannajuhola.net,
www.myspace.com/johannajuhola

  
  Ah, and here, just as I was about to hit the deadline with that review, comes a new album by the aforementioned Tango-Orkesteri Unto that so elevated a sunny June Sunday lunchtime at World Village. Johanna Juhola, JPP’s Mauno Järvelä and Timo Alakotila on violin and piano, guitarist Petri Hakala and bassist Hannu Rantanen back singer Pirjo Aittomäki, a prime exponent of the warmly caressing strength and serenity that’s characteristic of female Finnish vocal sound.
     Finnish tango is a different beast from its Argentinian precursors, and continues to evolve in a different direction, musically and in its lyrics of love and loss set against Finland’s wide landscape of endless green pine and birch taiga forests and lakes and its climate of cold winters and short, intensely celebrated and often hot summers.
     Unto makes rich, swirling, beautifully played and gorgeously arranged music more evocative of ornate cafés and tea-dances than the rural dance-floors of Finnish folk tango, with something of the longing and passion of Portuguese fado; indeed the orchestra was formed to play at Expo’98 in Lisbon. This second CD brings a heart-rendingly seductive, surging set of material from Finnish composers and poets from the mid 20th century into the 21st, including Juhola, Alakotila and the doyen of Finnish tango composition from whom the band takes its name, Unto Mononen.
    
     www.arcmusic.co.uk,
www.tangoorkesteriunto.com

     The duo of Markku Lepistö’s 2-row diatonic and 5-row chromatic accordions with Pekka Lehti’s double bass is a conceptually simple but satisfyingly full-sounding combination that over the last couple of years has been one of Finland’s most world-gigging units, and they’ll be appearing at this year’s Womad UK.
      Lepistö has long been one of the most admired squeezers on the Finnish folk music scene, playing with among others Unto guitarist Petri Hakala, Pirnales, Progmatics and Värttinä, and Lehti has likewise been the bassist of choice with many bands. Helsinki is a set of eight compositions, including a tango, in which they draw out the tonal possibilities of their instruments in intricate pacey numbers and lyrical slow pieces.
     Finland’s national instrument, the kantele, is currently being reborn, and the country’s fiddlers are more skilful and inventive than ever, but playing that world-ubiquitous instrument the button accordion Lepistö, Juhola, Pohjonen and Kalaniemi are proving major Finnish artistic exports.

     www.aitorecords.com


© 2010 Andrew Cronshaw
 


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