Kari Ikonen trio, Beauteous Tales and Offbeat Stories, Ozella

From 2015. In what has been a poor year for piano trios Beauteous Tales and Offbeat Stories bucks the downward trend. This gem is from a band that you, possibly like me, might never have previously heard of although they have been around a while. …

Published: 30 Nov 2019. Updated: 4 years.

From 2015. In what has been a poor year for piano trios Beauteous Tales and Offbeat Stories bucks the downward trend. This gem is from a band that you, possibly like me, might never have previously heard of although they have been around a while.

With a detail from a 16th century painting by Hieronymus Bosch on the cover rendered from the Triptych of the Temptation of St Anthony, a flipped representation of two figures riding on the back of a flying fish, two Finns and an Armenian come together in a combination as devastatingly effective as [em] in their pomp or the Helge Lien trio at their grittiest there is great flow here the ultimate requisite for a top piano trio. Exuberance, ideas, and above all trio empathy are all present and correct here, too.

Finnish pianist Kari Ikonen has a different style to his fellow Finn Iiro Rantala, perhaps a little more Herbie Hancock-inclined in the jazzier episodes and less overtly classical in his method although this latter side of his playing is clear say on the introduction to ‘The 4th Part of the Harbour Trilogy’. Like Rantala Ikonen knows how to run with an improvisation, the skill at speed on the sparkling if bizarrely titled ‘L’avant-midi d'une elfe’ quite something to behold.

It’s not all fireworks: the serious arco bass at the beginning of ‘Astri Pes,’ a lament that owes its origins to the work of poet Gusan Ashot (1907-1989) arranged by the bassist Ara Yaralyan, takes us into a different dimension that Ikonen then responds to with painstaking solemnity resisting the urge to resort to melodrama a process that sucks you in completely. Drummer Markku Ounaskari is a listening presence at all times injecting just enough heat to make his role plain or stepping in to open up proceedings deftly on the absorbingly complex ‘Verhotango.’

A softly unfolding iridescent version of John Coltrane’s ‘Countdown’ is another significant talking point as well as a number of highly evolved Ikonen compositions, this album is full of surprises and interesting content: even a consciousness expanding Bollywood choice keeps you guessing. A record worth getting to know in all its carefully rendered detail. SG

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K-Music launch

From 2018. On K-Music 2018 launched at the Korean Cultural Centre close to Trafalgar Square. Hoseong Yong, the centre’s director spoke to the gathered specialist music media and scenesters after he was introduced by David Jones, a director of …

Published: 30 Nov 2019. Updated: 3 years.

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From 2018. On K-Music 2018 launched at the Korean Cultural Centre close to Trafalgar Square.

Hoseong Yong, the centre’s director spoke to the gathered specialist music media and scenesters after he was introduced by David Jones, a director of music producers Serious.

Pansori, Korean traditional solo opera, is a theme at this London festival of Korean Music in the autumn.

World music magazine Songlines editor-in-chief Simon Broughton made a short speech that was droll at times especially as he charted his journey from holding a strong aversion to Pansori, an attitude that was dramatically changed for him when he was present during a typically very long performance in Seoul. He told us that he had experienced a certain awakening.

The style, if you are unfamiliar with Pansori, shares affinities plainly with the effects engendered by the nevertheless very different Tuvan vocal traditions and transports the listener into an unearthly, private, contemplative space.

A giant of music journalism, the erstwhile Newsnight foreign television news correspondent —an English Ryszard Kapuściński — The Guardian world music writer Robin Denselow, also spoke. He said that he had just become aware of the K-Music programme for 2018 minutes before and was invited to speak by the launch organisers, obliging at the last minute. His short speech went down well going by the murmurs of approval from the gathering.

Interspersed between promo video clips featuring festival artists that were displayed on a monitor and described each time prior to their run time by David Jones who also spoke a little to one of the K-Music acts, the Urban Sound duo of London based Thai/Australian pianist Belle Chen and Korean percussionist Jihye Kim who then performed several pieces that melded several traditions ancient and modern into an obliquely spiky mixture. Their K-Music 2018 concert will take place on 19 October at Kings Place, in the smaller Hall of the well loved chamber music and gallery restaurant complex that has without fear of exaggeration become a 21st century analogue in part of the Wigmore Hall in the short 10 years since the Place opened.

Headliners for 2018 include Pansori icon Ahn Sook-Sun, who appears in the Purcell Room on 3 November in a surtitled performance of a darkly humorous goblin-and-gourd seed-strewn ancient tale taken from the Heungbo-Ga.

The great jazz singer Youn Sun Nah playing the QEH on 20 November will also return to the London concert stage; and in the Purcell Room Near East Quartet, who meld contemporary jazz and traditional Korean music and who emerged debuting on the German ECM jazz label this year are the likely big discovery for many of this year’s festival searching for renewed enlightenment and an injection of original ideas.