New dimensions in saxophone

When someone says ‘jazz,’ do you think of a saxophone? It’s the instrument most associated with the genre, and rarely prominent elsewhere, though composers from Claude Debussy to Kalevi Aho and Esa-Pekka Salonen have written concertos for it.

Thelonious Monk wrote a tune called “Ugly Beauty” for piano, but the phrase may be even more apt for the saxophone, whose sound teeters between loveliness and dissonance. In the hands of a virtuoso, it can be romantic, soothing or painful and terrifying, sometimes all at once – like life? 

Members of the saxophone family can sound like birds, whales and other creatures. They can also parallel the human voice, expressing sobs to laughter and inspiring vocal improvisers such as Billie Holiday and Jon Hendricks. The horn can strike a deep chord within, as all these albums do. 

Adele Sauros Quartet: Your Special Loss
Fresh Sounds, 2024

Wordless vocals waft in the background of the title track of the latest Adele Sauros Quartet album, the group’s fourth since getting together in 2012. Sauros is a strong presence on the Helsinki jazz scene, honing her chops and improvisational talent with groups like Superposition, JAF Trio and the Jonathan Bäckström Quartet – appearing on albums by all three this year. Her own album is more straight-ahead post-bop jazz than any of those, or the other discs reviewed here. 

Besides being skilled at free and more mainstream jazz, Sauros is a solid composer, too, as this all-original set makes clear. While she most often plays tenor sax, two of the most appealing tracks here feature the soprano. 

The lively “Something Borrowed” has klezmer and Middle Eastern tinges, with agile dancing and darting from her sax and heady interplay with the band. That sets up a playful rivalry between pianist Toomas Keski-Säntti and drummer Tuomas Timonen, with bassist Vesa Ojaniemi refereeing.

On the album’s longest track, the emotionally charged “Stop Those Words,” Sauros takes more chances in the higher registers, nearly cracking with vulnerability. Keski-Säntti also takes more risks, spurring Timonen to more energetic looseness before Sauros wraps it up with a tender, flute-like sound.

She offers a deeper tone in the affecting “Morning Rise Awake,” which could just as well be a late-night conversation. The two-minute “Awakening” shows her chops and style on an unaccompanied solo that’s all too brief. 

Orma, Päivinen, Espinoza, Rauhala, Laihonen: Albert Ayler Reawakened 
Eclipse, 2024

There’s wilder, noisier group improvisation on this sprawling 18-track album led by two saxophonists: Pepa Päivinen and Italian colleague Dimitri Grechi Espinoza. Like its namesake, avant-sax pioneer Albert Ayler (1936–1970), the set spans a wide variety of sounds and moods, from hymn-like melodies to anguished free jazz that veers into cacophony. 

The first disc of this double CD was recorded live in Helsinki and Kerava in 2022. The shows were part of a series of dramatized tributes to African-American free jazz pioneers put together by radio host and author Markku Salo. He appears on one track here, reciting a translated visionary poem by the troubled Ayler, who shattered preconceptions before his tragic early death. 

Improbably, Ayler’s recording career began at the Finnish Broadcasting Company in 1962, followed by guest slots at barn dances in the Finnish countryside, which must have been startling for everyone involved. 

Baritone sax specialist Päivinen began playing in the ‘60s and toured with guitarist Jukka Tolonen in the ‘70s before playing with drummer Edward Vesala, pianist Iro Haarla, saxophonist Anthony Braxton and many pop and rock acts. Espinoza, meanwhile, has recorded meditative solo saxophone works at ancient churches in Italy, among other projects. 

They’re joined by electric guitarist Jukka Orma, veteran of Finnish rock bands such as Sielun Veljet and Hurriganes, as well as bassist Ville Rauhala and drummer Simo Laihonen from the exploratory Tampere trio Black Motor. 

Orma’s playing is powerful, evoking Jimi Hendrix and Jerry Garcia on his tune “Sing Happy” and mournful Adrian Belew on Laihonen’s gorgeous “On a Summer's Day”. He also plays some tasty duo improvisations with Espinoza, but there are too many long guitar solos on this overlong album. The set also includes fillers like “Dixie in the Style of Albert Ayler,” a raucous, self-explanatory joke that doesn’t stand up to repeated listens.

There are two versions of several songs, including the Ayler anthem “Ghosts,” played first in a jaunty Päivinen arrangement that amusingly brings to mind Monty Python’s “Lumberjack Song”. It ends with the horns good-naturedly squabbling like birds in a tree before settling down for the night.

Most interesting is the second disc, which contains Ayler-inspired originals by the group members, including “Kukikas,” a showcase for Päivinen’s wide palette of expression.

Pauli Lyytinen: Lehto/Korpi 
We Jazz, 2024

Unaccompanied solos make up this album by Pauli Lyytinen, who like Sauros often works with Olavi Louhivuori – drummer for both Superposition and the experimental trio Elifantree, which Lyytinen has co-led since 2007. The saxophonist also plays in an array of groups with the likes of trumpeter Verneri Pohjola and Swiss trombonist Samuel Blaser.

His second solo album, billed as “widescreen environmental jazz ambient,” features Lyytinen on tenor, alto and soprano saxophone as well as live effects, Mellotron and percussion, with a sprinkling of his own field recordings. These include calls of swans and nightingales that become duet partners.

Most of the first side, Lehto (“Grove”), is pastoral and subtle, close to the fluty “ambient jazz” of recent albums by Nala Sinephroand André 3000. “Lehto V” features four hypnotic minutes of circular breathing, loops of melody that gradually evolve in a warm, organic way. Lyytinen also plays elegant, romantic solos that suggest old-time greats like Lester Young or Ben Webster, sometimes in a leisurely call-and-response with a choral Mellotron sound. 

The Korpi (“Raven”) side is a slightly more challenging listen, with “Korpi II” evoking spiritual conflict in a wide, echoey space – catharsis in a cathedral? Elsewhere the Mellotron conjures up a more modest, homespun spirituality, like a pump organ during a prayer meeting in Grandma’s parlour with sax wafting in through the window like sunbeams. 

After the complexity of Lyytinen’s work with Elifantree and other groups, the simplicity and purity of this album is refreshing. It ends with drones, drops of water and echoey pops of the sax buttons.

Heli Hartikainen: Chronovariations  
Multiphonic Works, 2024

And saxophone button pops start off the debut album by Heli Hartikainen, alongside breathing and tapping sounds. It was recorded at a 600-year-old stone church near Turku using binaural 3D recording technology – making this a visual experience through headphones. The reverberating medieval structure becomes an extension of their instrument.

Hartikainen, the youngest of these sax players, earned a degree in classical clarinet along with studies at the Sibelius Academy’s folk music department. There they met the other members of the “minimalist art-folk ensemble” Aoide, which released a mostly vocal album in 2020, as well as collaborator Esther Calderón Morales, who provides programming and live electronics on Chronovariations.

The two premiered this five-part suite of experimental sound art at the 2022 Flow Festival, complete with brooding visual effects, resonating metal objects and an array of acoustic and electronic sounds. 

On the record’s second track, those button-popping sounds become a rhythmic clanking, like train wheels or shackles in a dungeon. They simultaneously move further away while becoming more intense, echoing Steve Reich’s Different Trains. There’s rumbling and banging on sheet metal before the sax enters like a distant foghorn. Later on the first side, Hartikainen also uses circular breathing, but like Lyytinen, as a form of expression rather than a gimmick. 

While parts of this album could likewise fit in with the current “ambient jazz” trend, most of it is a tantalising mystery; indescribable, indecipherable long slabs of sound and melody, coupled with a sinewy physical and emotional power. 

Of all these releases, this is the one that really pushes forward the possibilities of the instrument. And with mysterious layers to be explored, it’s the one I’ll return to most in the future – a future that it boldly foreshadows. 

Featured photo: Julius Töyrylä