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Esa Pietilä records Kalevi Aho Tenor Saxophone concerto for BIS Records

Esa Pietilä records Kalevi Aho Tenor Saxophone concerto for BIS Records

Esa Pietilä records Kalevi Aho Tenor Saxophone concerto for BIS Records. The recording was made 20.-21. of April 2022 with Saimaa Sinfonietta and conductor Erkki Lasonpalo. Internationally acclaimed Finnish contemporary composer Kalevi Aho wrote and dedicated the concerto to Esa Pietilä.

Pietilä did the two premiere performances of the new concerto with two Finnish orchestras in march 2016. The concerto is a challenging  contemporary piece for tenor saxophone and it exploits all the possible playing techniques of the today´s modern tenor saxophone expression plus it allows a room for improvisational skills on the main Cadenza.

The work is published by Fennica Gehrman and the schedule for album release by BIS records TBA…

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Liberty Ship´s new album with new FIN-NOR line-up

Jazz Musician of the Year 2016 awarded saxophonist Esa Pietilä leads his quartet Liberty Ship to the waters of free improvisation again.

The renewed Liberty Ship consists of a Finnish-Norwegian crew. Two top Norwegian jazz musicians, pianist Håvard Wiik and bassist Ole Morten Vågan brought superb new flow and energy to the sessions. The drumming of Olavi Louhivuori here is stunning and creative as always and Esa’s horn sounds strongly more diverse in ideas and timbre than ever before. The result of these recordings, Signal Horn, is even more intense in integrity than the groups previous albums, and its newborn sound leads the quartet towards uncharted waters. 

Liberty Ship debuted its new music recently at Nordic Music Days 2018.

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Esa Pietilä Yrjö Award

Esa Pietilä Yrjö Award

The Yrjö Jazz award 2016 was given to saxophonist Esa Pietilä (b. 1964) for his original, genre-defying work in the field of avant-garde jazz.

“Pietilä is known as a fearless improviser and musical visionary. His repertory is extremely versatile, including collaborations with classical orchestras. Moreover, he has brought not only Finnish but also international critics to their knees: the influential jazz magazine New York City Jazz Record shortlisted the debut album of Pietilä’s group Liberty Ship among the albums of 2013,” Petteri Klintrup, the Chair of the Finnish Jazz Federation board, explained.

The Yrjö Jazz Prize is an annual award given to a Finnish jazz artist in acknowledgement of his or her outstanding contribution to Finnish jazz music.

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Esa Pietilä solo album Times And Spaces

Esa Pietilä solo album Times And Spaces

Esa Pietilä solo album Times & Spaces connects the acoustic expression of solo saxophone with live-electronics. The double album is a strong artistic statement and exploration into the world of improvisation. The album consists of two discs, one with acoustic expression and the second one with live-electronics which connects tenor saxophone´s acoustic expression with immense possibilities of live-electronics.  With live-electronics Pietilä creates diverse atmospheres and unique musical ambients. Pietilä exploits the use of live-electronics with his own personal ways e.g. with motion censors and other unusual controllers to tweak sounds etc. Times & Spaces is the second solo saxophone album of Pietilä.

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Esa Pietilä premieres Kalevi Aho Tenor Saxophone Concerto

Esa Pietilä premieres Kalevi Aho Tenor Saxophone Concerto

Internationally acclaimed Finnish contemporary composer Kalevi Aho wrote a tenor saxophone concerto and dedicated it to Esa Pietilä. Esa did the premiere performances of the new concerto with two Finnish orchestras in march 2016. The concerto presents Aho´s extraordinary compositional skills and his magnificent ability to write for a solo instrument as a soloist for orchestra. In the concerto Aho has used all the possible (and extended) playing techniques for the todays modern tenor saxophone to handle plus allowes some room for Esa´s improvisational skills. Esa Pietilä is proud have the privilige to do the first performances of the concerto. The first performance of (a double premiere) is on 10th of march with Pori Sinfonietta at city of Pori in Finland and the second premiere will happen on 17th of march with Lappeenranta City Orchestra in Lappeenranta, Finland

Video intervied of Esa to insights of Aho´s concerto:

Esa Pietilä repertoire for orchestras

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