Heikki Sarmanto: New Hope Jazz Mass

The pianist's shamanic 1979 Finno-American project, reissued on CD, melds gospel with Finnish tropes and the modal potency of Coltrane

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The new cover for this CD reissue of the double-LP Finlandia issue from 1979 doesn’t have the punch of the original, which is reproduced on the inside tray of the packaging. But the result of this collaboration between some of Finland’s and America’s finest remains as potent as ever.

Pianist and composer Sarmanto (born 1939) comes from an exceptional generation of Finnish musicians.This includes his brother Pekka (b 1945, a fine bassist, heard here and who founded the UMO/ New Music Orchestra in 1975); saxophonist and flautist Esa Pethman (born 1938) whose exploratory and chromatically finessed The Modern Sound Of Finland from 1965 remains a genre-blending classic of post-bop Finnish jazz, and multi-instrumentalist Juhani Aaltonen (born 1935 and who, like Heikki Sarmanto, appeared on Pethman’s 1965 masterpiece).

Recorded live in Helsinki’s Temppeliaukio Church, New Hope Jazz Mass melds American gospel with Finnish tropes and the modal potency of Coltrane in his pomp. The opening Duke And Trane, for example, is an irresistibly sprung, rolling and pumping blast, founded in part on a 16th-century Finnish melody but fired by the spirit of Coltrane’s A Love Supreme.

Throughout the often fervently pitched yet also lyrical and flute-fed Jazz Mass the quality of compositions, arrangements and playing is right up there, with terrific work from, e.g., the leader, Maija Hapuoja (v), Seppo Paakkunainen (ss, ts, f) and Pekko Pöyry (ss, as, f and another contributor to Pethman’s Modern Sound). And from America,the distinguished Gregg Smith Vocal Quartet and the Long Island Symphonic Choral Association bring an appropriate weight of sound to the music’s central celebration of the Christian god.

For me, the overall intensity here (and especially the contributions of Hapuoja) can conjure a near-shamanic aura. But whatever your spiritual inclinations, this music will surely touch you. Like Modern Sound, Sarmanto’s New Hope Jazz Mass remains a signal example of a great Finnish jazz generation’s courageous faith in crossing boundaries, going – as Kierkegaard once had it – “further, always further”.

Discography
Duke And Trane; Glory To God In The Highest; We Are God’s Holy Temple; Hymn For The Day; We Believe In One God; Intercessions; Northern Dance; Gracious Father; Holy, Holy, Holy; Through Him; Have Mercy On Us; Thank The Lord (69.38)
Heikki Sarmanto (p); Maija Hapuoja (v); Seppo Paakkunainen (ss, ts, f); Pekko Pöyry (ss, as, f); Pekka Sarmanto (b); Esko Rosnell (pc); Gregg Smith Vocal Quartet: Rosalind Rees (s); Fay Kittelson (a); Thomas Bogdan (t); Walter Richardson (b); Long Island Symphonic Choral Association (cond: Smith). Temppeliaukio Church, Helsinki, 8 September 1978.
Jazzaggression JACD736