It’s got a rhythm about it, soft little syllables that trip off the tongue, and that part of the name that makes you think instinctively, if a bit waywardly, of hippies. Yes, it’s the Tampere Jazz Happening, and its programme for this year has just been announced. And this year the festival has been chosen as festival of the year by the Finland Festivals organisation who promote festivals all over this fascinating jazz-mad country. The happening is based in just two venues, in the Finnish industrial city north-west of Helsinki, a less rainy, more snowy version of Manchester.
The venues are just across the square from one another, a stone’s throw from the city’s train station. One of these is pretty small, a little restaurant with a hothouse atmosphere, not surprising perhaps as there is a sauna elsewhere in the building. But, as it’s Finland, that’s maybe not that unusual. The other is a medium sized concert hall with a club space attached. Tampere has a reputation for being “cutting edge", but that’s slightly deceptive as its remit is very wide within creative music, and it’s not a small area of whatever that trickily serrated genre actually is. The Happening is just a great festival over a weekend that usually includes a local holiday, and if you want to escape the UK in early-November you’ll have a whale of a time. Acts this year include just one UK representative, the go-ahead prog-y firestarters WorldService Project, who presented a great festival called Match & Fuse in London earlier in the year, and will be be touring in the UK soon with the highly promising Norwegian outfit, Pixel.
The Tampere line-up for 2012 has a mix of the best new local and international names and some big stars. As well as WorldService Project, there’s Actuum, who made a big impression at the 12 Points festival in Portugal earlier this year, Big Blue, Gerry Hemingway Quintet, Vijay Iyer Trio, Ibrahim Maalouf, Jorma Tapio and Kaski, Slo Motive, Black Motor and Mikko Innanen, Boban and Marko Markovic Orchestra and DJ Borzin, Schneeweiss und Rosenrot, Hasse Poulsen’s Progressive Patriots, Sha’s Feckel, Adam Rudolph’s Moving Pictures Octet, The Jazz Passengers Reunited, Peter Brötzmann’s Chicago Tentet, Mopo, Rakka, Fredator, Ebo Taylor and The Afrobeat Academy plus DJ Bilongo, Han Bennink and Aki Takase, Mark Solborg Trio featuring Herb Robertson, Lotte Anker and Mikko Innanen, John Scofield Trio featuring Steve Swallow and Bill Stewart, and finally Adam Rudolph & Go: Organic Orchestra. (SG)
The Tampere Jazz Happening runs from 1-4 November. http://www.tamperemusicfestivals.fi/jazz/en/
WorldService Project pictured (photo: Philip Ower)