One of 2021's most acclaimed jazz-related releases was Promises from electronica artist Floating Points and jazz saxophone titan Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra. In a not very dissimilar style minus a symphony orchestra and yet the sound scales up just as magisterially, the Finnish duo of reedist Tapani Rinne and synth player Juha Mäki-Patola enter that remarkable still and ambient zone and it's another stunning approach that is worth becoming familiar with immediately ahead of the full album Open's 2022 release on the Seattle-based Hush Hush label.
Rinne already has been part of a classic recording of European free-music on the momentous Edward Vesala classic Lumi released by ECM in 1986. But this is his first collaboration with a musician from a further generation on in Mäki-Patola whose inspirations include Jóhann Jóhannsson, Nils Frahm and Max Richter and who emerged as a solo artist just last year with the album Breath.
Mäki-Patola says: ''The Beginning for 'Open Part I' was the meditative piano motif that I sent over to Tapani. He composed improvisational exploratory tenor saxophone melodies over the piano motif and minimal ambient synthesizer layers''. Look out for further singles from Open entitled 'Fall' in late-January and 'Brevity' to be released in mid-February. Tapani Rinne and Juha Mäki-Patola, top. Photo: Sami Mannerheimo
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