Iiro Rantala News
Finnish jazz pianist, composer and entertainer
- piano
- jazz, crossover jazz
- Finland
- pianist, composer, music teacher, jazz musician, film score composer
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2024-04-26
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2024-02-27 09:59:00
Classical music must not cease from exploration
Today is a poignant personal anniversary, so I have been listening to Valentin Silvestrov's Stille Lieder (Silent Songs) in the 1986 ECM recording. This morning that performance by baritone and Sergej Jakowenko accompanied by Ilja Scheps was, for me, the most sublimely appropriate masterpiece. But that is because of the personal conditions relating to today. Tomorrow, depending on the conditions, a Sibelius symphony, a Mozart string quartet, Iiro Rantala's jazz improvisations, or Steve Roach's electronica will be sublimely appropriate. Masterpieces, like every human condition, are impermanent. They come and go, and return and return - Silvestrov's Stille Lieder first featured here back in 2008, many years before the Ukrainian tragedy gave their composer his 30 minutes of fame. (Newcomers to Silvestrov's music should know that Stille Lieder are the root from which his better known masterpieces, the Fifth Symphony and Requiem for Larissa grew.) For decades classical music has been trying, without success, […]
2023-12-18 09:27:00
What would be the biggest headline ever?
[…] also regret that they have spent so much time and energy on the technical stuff, time they could have spent with the music, with all this beauty.The aliens know what they want: they would like to take a few artists back with them. Soon, however, when the aliens realize quite how impossible the artists' managers are to deal with, they drop the idea, and decide to develop their own music. That is Finnish pianist Iiro Rantala's sleeve essay for his recent album Potsdam, and he is seen in my header photo. Iiro Rantala studied piano in the jazz department of Sibelius Academy and classical piano at the Manhattan School of Music. His albums include Mozart, Bernstein, Lennon, featuring a performance of Mozart's ‘Piano Concerto No. 21, C Major, K.467 with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, and Veneziana depicting imaginary scenarios featuring famous composers in Venice recorded with members of the Berlin […]
2021-07-25 12:37:00
Four great albums that are victims of clickbait correctness
[…] the players are captured in outstanding sound by the 2018 recording. Wim Henderickx's music is notable for being uncompromisingly contemporary yet accessible - sample via this link. But clickbait correctness means, quite wrongly, it remains a well-kept secret. Now just imaging the clickbait feeding frenzy that would surround this album if it was conducted by Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla.... Wim Henderickx leads me to Jimi Hendrix, whose Little Wing inspires a track on Iiro Rantala's How Long is Now?, while the album's musical diversity is underlined by another track inspired by the Kyrie from Bach's B Minor Mass. On An Overgrown Path does not live off the patronage of record labels, so I'm not obliged to hype the latest, all too often mediocre, releases. Only one of my four featured albums was released in 2021, and How Long is Now? is actually a 2016 Act Music release. But I bought it recently […]
2021-01-05 13:42:00
When Alfred Brendel's Steinway played jazz
[…] After his successful bid for the iconic Steinway, Siggi Loch agreed in discussion with the then principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Simon Rattle and general manager of the Philharmonie Martin Hoffmann that Alfred Brendel's piano would return to the Philharmonie for a valedictory performance. At this concert in December 2012 it was played in the Kammermusiksaal of the Philharmonie by three of the finest jazz pianists in Europe, Michael Wollny, Leszek Możdżer, and Iiro Rantala, and, quite appropriately, the concert opened with two pianists improvising on the Aria from the Goldberg Variations. This first concert was a huge success and began the Jazz at Berlin Philharmonic series which continues today curated by Siggi Loch. Almost all concerts in the 1200 seat chamber music hall and even in the 2250 seats big hall have been sold out, and in 2014 Siggi Loch was awarded the Order […]
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