Horror Vacui

Chronique

Horror Vacui is the debut solo offering from Finnish vocalist, composer, producer, and bandleader Selma Savolainen. She is a member of the award-winning jazz-vocal group Signe and the warped jazz-pop-indie band Mikko Sarvanne Garden. Appearing on Michael Janisch's Whirlwind Recordings label, this set showcases ten original compositions that wed Finnish folk tenets, modern jazz, and indie pop. Savolainen wrote and arranged eight of these tunes for her handpicked, all-star Finnish jazz sextet: clarinetist Max Zenger, trumpeter Tomi Nikku, pianist Toomas Keski-Säntti, bassist Eero Tikkanen, and drummer and Okko Saastamoinen. In addition are two covers of jazz standards that have informed the singer's musical career: Billy Strayhorn's A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing" and Kurt Weill's and Ogden Nash's "Speak Low."
Zenger shines on set-opener "Intense Ways to Recover." It begins like a vanguard chamber piece, with only the singer's dreamy alto and overdubbed clarinets. When the rhythm section enters, Savolainen shifts into a syncopated delivery that exists somewhere between Meredith Monk, Blossom Dearie, and Kate Bush. "So Loud" weds a low-register, left-hand piano progression to twinned, droning lines from the clarinetist and vocalist. By the end of the first verse, a rock rhythm momentarily asserts itself in the refrain as the trumpet and clarinet begin expanding the harmonic frame to introduce Nikku's resonant solo. "Subjects I" finds Savolainen vocalizing in wide-open terrain that simultaneously recalls Julie Tippetts and Lauren Newton, with scatted lines, dissonant swoops, and angular lyricism. The reading of Strayhorn's tune is rendered as an indie pop song, with an unusual time signature and transposed keys and cadences. Savolainen employs elliptical phrasing that actually recalls Annette Peacock's, even as her economical articulation of the lyrics is reverential and resonant. "Haunted" is a jazz ballad that exists in the same musical stratosphere as Michael Garrick and Norma Winstone's groundbreaking 1970 album The Heart Is a Lotus. The canny interplay between the singer and each of her instrumentalists is warm, immediate, and emotionally communicative. The reading of "Speak Low" retains its theatrical ground, while the band sways and swings around her disciplined articulation of the striking words. She reflects the tune's original presentation even as she stretches herself, while the band walks a tightrope between cabaret and modern jazz. "Days of Suffering" was co-composed with Keski-Säntti and showcases Savolainen's mature composition style. Her pop phrasing and harmonic blueprint meet syncopated, nearly angular post-bop with muted trumpets, contrapuntal interplay from clarinet and piano, and cascading drums that transforms the ballad into a dramatic, powerful processional. The closing track offers a gentler translation of the album title: It literally means "the horror of the void." Savolainen, Nikku, and Keski-Santti turn that notion outward. They embrace each melodic idea and allow the band's members equal access to one another and the singer, who vulnerably hovers and floats through the lyric melody. Horror Vacui is an assured, expertly rendered, forward-thinking collection by one of Finland's most visionary singers and composers and will hopefully expose her to a global jazz audience.

© Thom Jurek /TiVo