Review: Emma Salokoski & Ilmiliekki Quartet
Emma Salokoski & Ilmiliekki Quartet: We sold our homesteads
Emma Salokoski and the Ilmiliekki Quartet have made an album that may appear to be a classic in the future, writes Jan-Erik Holmberg.
Emma Salokoski’s and the Ilmiliekki Quartet’s interpretations of Swedish songs are now available on disc. The collaboration was heard as early as 2005 in concert form at Viapori Jazz. The material, which already felt ready for publication, has been allowed to mature for almost four years.
For Ilmiliekki with Verneri Pohjola, Tuomo Prättälä , Antti Lötjönen and Olavi Louhivuori, this is the third album. The band keeps its identity well, but at the same time shows that the musicians are not limited to their own music. On the two previous albums, there are mostly compositions by the band members, while on the new album there are only two original songs, Edith Södergran’s lyrics A Trapped Bird set to music by Emma Salokoski and Little Friend with music by Verneri Pohjola and lyrics by Salokoski.
The rest of the repertoire includes well-known tones from our latitudes, such as Kling, the bell strikes, Vyssan lull (signed by Evert Taube, although the origin of the song may predate him) but also Den höga himlen by Jean Sibelius himself, to a text by Jacob Tegengren.
Pohjola’s trumpet forms a perfect second voice, which complements Salokoski and creates additional depth with wordless recitation. The instrumentalists and the vocalist work together on an equal footing – and it would be difficult to imagine the Ilmiliekki musicians as a backing group for the singing alone. Conversely, Salokoski’s chose-free singing also has instrumental features, which can be heard in unison parts of Watercolour and A Trapped Bird, for example. How good teamwork is can be heard especially well, for example. in Den höga himlen, which bravely moves forward with rhythms that alternate between more declamatory hymn qualities and perfectly executed singing ruby rhythms – a freer and more vivid sense of tempo with pauses that tell us how well they have the notes in their power. You can enjoy more of that in I Still Treat You to All the Good.
In the same way that Jan Johansson made immortal jazz out of folk tones, Emma Salokoski and the quartet go about it. And the comparison can be made all the way to the end: Johansson’s jazz in folk tones represented the modernism of the time in the 60s, and this album is the representative of this decade’s jazz.
They have not compromised and made half-sad song jazz, but full-blooded current music based on the qualities of folk songs that have lasted over generations. Then the music feels both fresh and timeless at the same time. But it’s not all sad all the time either, through the minor melancholy many major rays shine during the course of the album. The captured bird takes off well in Prättälä’s piano solo and the lift with the band’s turn.
It feels almost unreal to hear a Uusimaa election song, Kling klang klockan slå , performed as on this album. It is global and urban at the same time as it sounds like Finnish forest and meadow about the music. Salokoski transitions to an instrumental point of view in singing, bridging the different elements through liberated wordless tones.
By neither banalizing nor popularizing the concept, they lift the music to a new level and have made an album that can appear as a classic in the future. But of course, that remains to be seen. All ten pieces are good, hard to say which one is the best.