For one week (25.4 – 1.5), Espoo's evenings are devoted to music. The main concerts take place in Outokumpu-teltta, a big tent installed next to the library in Tapiola. If the weather if good, the festival will be like a long summer night.
Of course, there is a lot of jazz. Good jazz. Musicians from around the world are coming to play, such as vocalist Andy Bey and saxophonist Archie Schepp, both from United States, and the jazz vocalist from Australia Michelle Nicole and her quartet. In addition, local sensation The Five Corners Quintet will make a special appearance on Friday night.
Jazz festivals nowadays include much more of other musical genres other than jazz. In April Jazz will get the blues, with the great Erja Lyytinen and the Blues Caravan, which features a trio of female guitar players (Sue Foley, Deborah Coleman and Roxanne Potvin) this year. Hot Latin rhythms will warm the tent with the Eddie Palmieri's Afro-Caribbean All Stars, and hip hop will meet flamenco with Ojos de Brujo from Barcelona.
Guitar woman
This year's Blues Caravan is travelling with three female guitar players: Sue Foley, Deborah Coleman and Roxanne Potvin. It is a nice shift for music usually performed by hoochie coochie men.
Canada-born Sue Foley represents the power of women in blues and popular music. Since her debut album in 1992, she has impressed blues fans with her sweet voice and wicked guitar playing. Apart from her career, in the last few years she has focused on the Guitar Woman project, which is meant to “document the relationship between woman and the guitar from past to present and beyond”.
The CD compilation Blues Guitar Woman (2005) features songs by contemporary and traditional blueswomen from the 1930s, such as Memphis Minnie and Elvie Thomas. Now, Foley is working on the book Guitar Woman that tries offer a concise historical and biographical account of women guitarists throughout the world and their stories and philosophies.
Music Born Everywhere
by Sergio Reseco Fernández
{mosimage}Someone wakes up hungry in some city in the middle of the night, goes to the kitchen to look for a bite to eat but finds out that the fridge is just empty. It has happened probably to everyone and for Ojos de Brujo the solution for this is simple: Go down to the streets and celebrate. These are just some lines from one of the songs by this band born in the streets Barcelona, but looks out to many different directions.
Flamenco, a gender born from pain, gets together here with several influences and rhythms as distant to each other as hip hop from rumba – as a matter of fact, they have been defining their music as 'hip hop flamenquito'. Categorizing them would probably take too much time and it would definitely be quite useless. Ojos de Brujo (Eyes of the Wizard) is usually formed by eight members and represents the mix of cultures that is currently felt on the streets of many Mediterranean cities, with Barcelona one of the clearest examples.
Due to the fact that flamenco is the main base of their songs, their concerts are lively and full of energy. Currently they are touring the world presenting their third album Techarí. They will be coming from Tallinn to play in Espoo. Zarkus, from Finland, will share the stage with them in Outokumpu-teltta.