Rent Romus and Heikki Koskinen — Itkuja Suite, Invocations on Lament (Edgetone, 2023)
(Rent Romus’ Life’s Blood Ensemble will perform Itkuja Suite on May 27 (8:00 p.m.) and May 28 (4:00 p.m.) at Berkeley Finnish Hall, 1970 Chestnut St., Berkeley.)
Manala, released in 2020, was the second in a trilogy of jazz-centric albums exploring saxophonist Rent Romus’ Finnish heritage. That album retold legends of the underworld and the afterlife. Itkuja Suite, completing the trilogy, brings us back to the struggles of the living world through the jazz-minded Life’s Blood Ensemble and some boldly emotive singing by Heikki Laitinen.
Itkuja is a traditional Finnish music of lamentation, but its singers are hired for weddings as well as for funerals. It’s a dichotomy that I think we all have a sense for. There are glimmers of thankful happiness in times of mourning, and there is a heaviness and longing that accompanies moments of joy.
In that light, Itkuja Suite deftly traverses emotional borders, at once railing against the cruel world while inviting us to dance to big band-inspired jazz. But this isn’t about contrasting two extremes; to me, it’s more an exploration around a multi-dimensional field of conflicting, intertwining senses. Laitinen sings in Finnish and Karelian, in personalities ranging from weepy to a menacing growl. Traditional songs provide much of the lyrical source material, although there is also a song mourning the Soviet Union overrunning the Karelian region (a WWII-era development that parallels Russia’s invasion of Ukraine) and an original itkuja written by Romus, inspired by his own quest to recover his heritage.
The inspiration and some of the words date back centuries, but this is also a jazz project at heart, with most pieces written or arranged by Romus or Koskinen. The band delivering it is Romus’ Bay Area-based Life’s Blood Ensemble, 11 musicians counting Laitinen, Romus, and Koskinen, and they get ample room for soloing: sax, trumpet, flute, vibes and cello all take lead positions.
The songs best exemplifying the itkuja spirit might be those that open with majestic drama and then step into a more energetic, jazzy space. An example is “Runkoterian halla (Rungoteus),” which is based on a fable about a rye farmer and his spirit of perseverance. It’s a little more than a minute before the jazzy segment kicks in, with solos by Koskinen on e-trumpet and Romus on alto sax:
Memory Select: Journeys in Creative Music 