OLLI AHVENLAHTI — Vesa-Matti Loiri/ Kahlil Gibran/ Olli Ahvenlahti: Seitsemän Kertaa (review)

OLLI AHVENLAHTI — Vesa-Matti Loiri/ Kahlil Gibran/ Olli Ahvenlahti: Seitsemän Kertaa album cover Album · 1990 · Pop/Art Song/Folk Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
Matti P
During the 1980's, the Finnish jazz pianist and composer Olli Ahvenlahti became a familiar face to a wide domestic public as "Puppe", the kindly smiling, piano-playing sideman of Vesa-Matti Loiri's humorous musical performances in his comedic weekly TV show. Loiri (1945-2022) was a legendary Finnish actor/vocalist, best known for his humorous roles despite doing also serious ones. However, most of those TV viewers are hardly aware that the same partnership made two artistically 'serious' albums of poetry-based Vocal Jazz. Lasihelmipeli (1985) is based on Hermann Hesse's poems, and this album uses the poems of the Lebanon-born "prophet" Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931). Admittedly they are primarily seen as part of Loiri's discography, but IMHO well worth adding under Ahvenlahti's JMA page since Loiri is not in the database. All compositions and arrangements are naturally by Ahvenlahti who also plays the keyboards.

Sad to say that these albums are far less known than Loiri's series of (non-jazz) albums based on Eino Leino's poetry. But understandably so, since jazz is not very popular as a genre, and Leino is much closer to Finns' hearts than Hesse or Gibran. By the way, Loiri's third poetry-based jazz album Uuno Kailas (1995), which was a collaboration with the new generation jazz stars Jukka Perko and Severi Pyysalo, gained even commercial success (at least for a jazz album).

The piano oriented music here is elegantly flowing and sonically rather light and airy jazz chanson that deliberately puts the emphasis on the meaningful lyrics. This also leads to a certain amount of repetition of the verses which may get slightly frustrating if you want to listen to the album primarily as jazz music. But Loiri is such a powerful interpreter – technically he has always strongly divided opinions as a singer -- that the listener simply cannot ignore the words. For the same reason, non-Finnish speakers won't be fully able to absorb these albums.

My favourites are the opening title track (= Seven times) for its effective combination of strong melodies and lyrics counting the seven times when the protagonist has despised his soul, the beautifully airy 'Sinä olet vapaa' (= You are free), the slow and peaceful 'Minulle sanotaan' (= I am told), and the emotionally dramatic final song in which a dying man adresses his words to a vulture circling around him. Musically the weakest song is undoubtedly the humorous 'Viisas koira' (= Wise dog) in which cats and dogs argue over religious details.

All in all, like the Hesse album, this would deserve a wider recognition among the Finnish poetry-based music.
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