Teddy Rok and Ilkka Arola Sound Tagine on the terrace stage of Turku Sea Jazz

9.5.2023

Just like last year, a two-stage jazz oasis will be built at Forum Marinum Maritime Center on the last weekend of July. Between the performances on the main stage, the terrace stage is taken over on Friday night by jazz visionary Teppo Mäkynen’s interesting duo, and Saturday’s musical soup is mixed under the leadership of trumpeter Ilkka Arola.

Teddy Rok: Atonal Drums is an experimental solo project by renowned drummer-producer Teppo Mäkynen, in which both acoustic and electronic drum expressions are embedded in a synthesizer-based sample landscape. At the intersection, both tonal and atonal, composed and improvised music meet. The live line-up has grown into a duo where, in addition to Mäkynen, Nikita Rafaelov, an interesting keyboardist-producer of a younger generation, plays. The duo’s expression combines modern jazz, ambient, hip-hop, electronica and New Age aesthetics. The diverse influences are stitched together by the friends’ strong human and jazzy touch, which keeps the performance organic, down-to-earth and always very spontaneous.

Ilkka Arola Sound Tagine combines the spices of Middle Eastern music, communicative jazz expression and danceable rhythms borrowed from the world’s many folk traditions into adventure music that moves both the listener’s body and mind. Bandleader Arola relies on the power of a singing pop melody while confusing the crowd with rich, acoustic and electric rhythm textures and cinematic soundscapes. Ilkka Arola Sound Tagine, performing as a quartet at the Turku Sea Jazz gig, is known for its live performances full of strong emotional charge, the joy of playing and surprising situations even for the band itself.

Turku Sea Jazz will be celebrated at Cathedral Park Terrace, Seili island and Forum Marinum on July 26–29, 2023. In connection with the purchase of tickets, audience can support the important marine environmental work of the John Nurminen Foundation at Tiketti.