Back from a mini tour of Yorkshire and Stockport and cheering for supporting act Indignation Meeting
A marvel of musical transmigration
Iro Haarla 9/4/18
ALISTAR FINDLAY is mesmerised by this multiple ‘Visions of Scotland’ assault on the audience’s eyes and senses
The Star's critics ANGUS REID, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MICHAL BONCZA reviews I Am Love, The Penguin Lessons, Freaky Tales, The Thicket
MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about the direction of a play centered on a DVLA re-training session for three British-Pakistani motorists
New releases from Steve Knightley, Jupiter & Okwess, Jason Palmer, Lisa Knapp and Gerry Driver, Kin'Gongolo Kiniata, Ingrid Laubrock/Tom Rainey, Dan Sealey, Simin Tande, PAZ
Peter Mitchell's photography reveals a poetic relationship with Leeds
A uncomfortably misogynistic authorial voice that sometimes seems to lack insight troubles FIONA O’CONNOR
Iro Haarla
Northbound
(ECM)
IRO HAARLA was born in 1956 in Tampere, Finland, 70 miles north of Helsinki. After school she studied classical piano and composition at Helsinki’s Sibelius Academy, where she also discovered an empathy with great jazz pianists like Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans and the Canadian Paul Bley.
She identified strongly with Bley’s “silence and dissonance.”
Haarla met the Finnish jazz drummer, later her husband, Edward Vesala, in 1978 and put aside her classical ambitions, joining his ensemble Sound and Fury as arranger and self-taught harpist, bringing a new architecture to his music.
More from this author
CHRIS SEARLE speaks to drummer Steve Noble
CHRIS SEARLE interviews saxophonist Chris Williams about the extraordinary electro-acoustic album LEDLEY - a bold fusion of Jazz, football, and community spirit
CHRIS SEARLE speaks to Rwanda-born jazz vocalist INEZA
CHRIS SEARLE speaks to Ghanaian trumpeter PETER SOMUAH
