Sid Hille

I know! Are you kidding me? No updates since March?

Well: Life… you know?
I haven’t been lazy, as you can see in my gig calender.
I’ve been back in Austria to play two gigs with Herbert Könighofer in May and the experience continues when Herby comes back to Finland in the end of November.

In the meantime there are several other projects keeping me busy.
The most time-intensive one is the commission I got from organ virtuoso Susanne Kujala to write a concerto for organ and wind orchestra. Susanne and the Kaartin soittokunta will premiere the piece in August 2018 at Temppeliaukio Church.

In this very same church, by the way, I played my solo piano improvisations today for the 400th time. In August, on the Night of the Arts, I did a multi-instrumental soundscape performance there.

  
We recorded and filmed the concert.
I haven’t heard or seen the material yet, but if all went well, I might release the concert on DVD. Anyhow, it felt great to play there, with a lovely live sound made by Joonas Saikkonen, with the beautiful new lighting system the church had installed the very same day, and with Sigurdur and Cansu from Hekla Productions filming the whole thing.

So, while spending a lot of time in the workroom now, putting dots on music paper, I once in while take a little break and fiddle with my latest new toy, the Moog Sub37.

I’ll use the Moog (and of course the Rhodes) in our upcoming concerts with the Foreign Friends, so there’s yet another reason to come and check us out (in Pori, Hanko, Juttutupa Helsinki, Turku and at the Tampere Jazz Festival). Great playing, great sounds and a great show.

Barely recovered from Tampere on Nov 3rd, we will get the rare opportunity to perform a film score I composed in 2012 for Saara Cantell’s film ‘Stars above/Tähtitaivas talon yllä’ live, along with the film. This very beautiful film plays in three different time periods in the history of Finland, which is why it is included in the centennial celebrations of Finland’s independence.

If you happen to be in Espoo on November 4th, come to the atmospheric subterranean Kannusali and join us for this exceptional experience.

Heikki Nikula – clarinets
Teemu Viinikainen – guitar
Eija Kankaanranta – kantele
Sid Hille – piano
Ville Herrala – bass
Joonas Riippa – drums

And the year doesn’t end there.
Before Herby joins us in Northern Finland my trio F# will spend a week in Estonia to play four concerts with Estonian vocal improvisers Ivi Rausi and Laura Põldvere.

F# is
Sid Hille – keys
Jori Huhtala – bass
Markus Ketola – drums

Check the gig calender to find out when and where things are happening.
Welcome to listen!

What a week!
And what a thrill it was to play!
Six days, six concerts, 2500 kilometers covered.
If you have followed this blog, you might remember how multi-instrumentalist Herbert Könighofer and I met last year in September to play three concerts in Austria.
The Vienna concert can be viewed here on Vimeo:

This time in Finland, we played three gigs as a quartet, Herby joining the Sid Hille Trio F# with bassist Jori Huhtala and drummer Markus Ketola, one as a quintet in Tallinn, Estonia, with the addition of singer Liina Saar, another one as trio, Herby, me and violinist Virpi Taskila and one more as a Duo at the Sara Hildén Art Museum in Tampere.

The wonderful and challenging thing of it was that all the concerts were completely improvised.
One of us would play the first note and we’d take it from there, responding to each other, to the surroundings and the audience.
Exciting!
NOW – and nothing but the present moment!
I’ll post some videos soon.

Before Herby left Finland, we had a little photo session at the villa where Herby had been staying, the Eläintarhan huvila in Helsinki, which is a residence for foreign artists to spend up to two months and get inspired by this country and culture.
Here is another picture from that session:

So, while we’re looking forward to some concerts coming up in Austria this fall and possibly also in Finland again, I got a pretty busy spring here in Helsinki.
First me and my old friend saxophonist Manuel Dunkel will be playing with tap dancers Max Pollack and Jussi Lindroos this week in Turku, then it’s time to get into the composer’s shed to dedicate myself to two commissions for organ pieces and then I’ll be heading to Bremen again for the JazzAhead, meeting ‘the industry’, promoters, agents, musician colleagues…

Things are happening!
And I haven’t even mentioned the new string quartet CD ‘Farbformen’ yet… But I’ll get back to that next time.

All the best to y’all
Sid

So, here’s what I’ve been up to lately:

The Sid Hille Camerata‘s new CD ‘Farbformen’ (SatnaMusic CD 171) will be ready in May 2017.

We had rented a lovely villa in the Finnish countryside last November and spent three days recording two of my string quartets and some additional pieces for piano quintet.

It was an inspired session, relaxed yet concentrated, everybody played their souls out and engineer Markus Ketola recorded and mixed the music with a fantastic sound.
The same artist that had painted the cover for our first CD ‘The Zen Connection‘ five years ago, Keanne van de Kreeke, also designed this new cover for ‘Farbformen’ and I’m really happy about how it turned out.

Here’s the nice pair side by side: The Zen Connection and Farbformen

Chamber music, fresh, beautiful, exciting, full of energy – music to keep you inspired.
Keep an eye on the gig calendar for upcoming concerts, and like our Facebook page to hear the latest gossip about the band.
If you would like to order the new or any other CD’s of mine, please send an email to SatnaMusic (info{at}satnamusic.fi).

Just a little blip in the middle of a pretty busy fall:

I paid a visit to Austria last week (mountains and lakes), where I met up with multi-instrumentalist Herbert Könighofer for the first time ever. We played three concerts, in Salzburg, Hallstatt and Vienna, the last of which was recorded and can be viewed here:

As you can see, we had a pretty good time and we connected well.
I got to play around with my pedal board, especially the Ditto looper came in really handy, but also harmonizer and ring modulator are in good use.
The co-operation is sure to continue, maybe already as soon as mid-October.
(For regular updates check the SatnaMusic Facebook site or follow my Twitter)

After finishing a new big band composition this week (ominously titled ‘Spotify my Jazz’) I am now getting ready for next week’s concert of the Contemporary Collective. We’re playing at the legendary Digelius record shop on Helsinki’s Five Corner Square on October 3rd. Come and pop in, it’s free entrance and they always have a bombastic atmosphere there, a comfy sofa and a great host, the owner of the shop: Emu!

Last not least, I’d like to mention that UGETSU is gathering some very nice reviews. I might play some of it live in Digelius and of course they’ll have the record there, vinyl and CD.
Actually, why not turn this into a little lottery: the first person to come up to me in Digelius saying ‘Hi, I came to listen to your gig because I read your blog’ will get a free copy of UGETSU right there and then. How does that sound?

Hope to see you there,

Sid

So, here it is:

Soundscapes by Sid Hille – UGETSU

Five years after ‘ONE’, my first soundscape-recording, it felt like it was time again to do something really special. Of course I love all my projects, but going into the studio without any plan, adding layers and ideas on top of each other, being completely in the moment, no goal, except for the vague notion, that it’s going to be on vinyl and therefore the length could be around 18 minutes per side – well, that is something out of the ordinary jazz life (if there is such a thing as ‘ordinary’ jazz life).

I started recording on two days in February, playing percussion, Rhodes, various synths, melodica, kantele, theremin – just about anything I could find in my work room, that would make an interesting sound.
Then I let it rest for a few weeks.

I had booked the Finnvox studios in Mid-March, because I knew, I’d want some piano on the recording, too. A few days before the date, when listening to the material I had already recorded, I started feeling that it needed something more than piano. There was this long beautiful synth-track and I thought a saxophone would be nice with it. Also some singing would be nice.
So on very short notice, I invited Jukka Perko and Anni Elif Egecioglu to come to the session, both had time, and both heard the material there and then for the first time.

I still can’t fathom how masterfully Jukka improvised a 7-minute solo, making my pre-recorded chords sound like they were following him, anticipating chord changes he had never heard before.
With Anni we improvised a complete new track on the basis of a few words I had written that same morning; in the studio I got the idea, what if she sang them also in Swedish. One take – YEP! This was it!

About a month later, in April, still something seemed missing.
During the last year I’ve been doing some voice-over gigs, the first one ever actually for a promo video of my Contemporary Collective, and I started wondering how a spoken text would work. I asked my wife Virpi, who has a wonderful soft voice, to speak a text in dialogue with Jukka’s solo; I spoke a few short texts myself (inspired by Zappa’s ‘Are You Hung Up’ on ‘We’re only in it for the money’, one of my all-time favourite records).

And next, we (engineer and co-producer Tipi Tuovinen and me) were off to guitarist Teemu Viinikainen’s workshop to record a guitar solo on a groovy track that was to be named ‘Stroll in the park’, a sort-of Blues that seemed to be asking for some guitar-wizardry.

Cutting the vinyl master at Timmion records’ cellar studio was another memorable experience, with all these great machines that cut a groove into a piece of vinyl – really – right there in front of your eyes – and then….: wait.
Wait for the test pressing. Four weeks. Good.
Wait for the delivery. Four weeks. Yes.
Here they are now, half a year after starting the project.

So, dear friends: if you’re interested, come to the release party and get your very own copy, vinyl or CD, at the Viapori Jazz Festival on August 25th, 2016.
Or visit the fantastic record store Digelius. They have all my records and thousand other interesting ones on top.
Or just send my publisher SatnaMusic a message, info(at)satnamusic.fi, and have them send it straight to your home.

Enjoy life and good music!
Why not?

Cheers, Sid