Jazzkaar
Telliskivi Creative City
Tallinn, Estonia
April 21-28, 2024

Customarily, the almost-always April placement of the Jazzkaar festival is accompanied by a goodly beaming of spring-flavored sunshine, perhaps infected by the odd murky downpour, but soon drying off its feathers. Instead, during 2024's 35th edition, Tallinn's wondrous eight-dayer was forced to accept an incongruous spring-mush of a snowstorm, deeply clinging, sludging around for a few days, chilled to the bones. Somewhat cleverly, Jazzkaar happens indoors, around the Telliskivi Creative City, mostly alternating between the smaller ground floor stage of the Fotografiska gallery and the full-theatre-size of a space what has now been taken over by the venerable Von Krahl drama company, in a full-on venue transplant from the old town.

As ever, the festival opened with a specially commissioned work, on a grander scale, composed for a large ensemble, containing a kernel of a combo, led by its writer (and singer) Bianca Rantala. Straight off, this combination formulated a style that had substantial musical structures, but were sometimes overlaid with ill-matching commercial-style pop vocal parts. Despite possessing a jazz heart, Moral Paradox sported the tongue of mainstream radio suitability, prompting a self-disconnected quality that was not particularly successful. Chief soloist was Finland's Jukka Eskola (trumpet, fl��gelhorn), fronting the impressive array of strings, mixed instruments, and six backing singers, all conducted by the dynamic Valter Soosalu. On a basic musical level, it was never less than interesting, and quite an achievement of unity.

Over in Fotografiska, we discovered the more compact form of a trio, although a threesome with a wide, cinematic sound, not least due to their heavy immersion in electronic forces. This is a new Estonian supergroup (although admittedly only viewable as such on a domestic level), featuring three key players on the Tallinn scene, all of them composers and bandleaders.