Sjöström, Vandeweyer, Mureddu, Herrala
04.05.2025 15:00 – 16:00
Standard price 15€ + order fee (from 1,50 € + 0,65 % of the order)
Students/ pensioners/ children 12€ + order fee (from 1,50 € + 0,65 % of the order)
Harri Sjöström, Els Vandeweyer, Libero Mureddu, Ville Herrala are among the most innovative voices in contemporary improvised music and can now be heard as a quartet at the Sibelius Museo, Turku, as part of a project initiated by Harri Sjöström.
As improvisers, composers, sound researchers and teachers, the four renowned musical personalities have been working independently for decades on music that leaves conventions behind.
On this evening, they will engage in a complex and virtuoso exchange of their innovative and style-defining positions. With an unreserved, open playing attitude and extended playing techniques, they enhance the ensemble sound to a performative fullness.
The audience can look forward to a rousing and inspiring sound experience!
Ville Herrala, double bass
Herrala born 1979 is a double bass player originally from Turku. Herrala has played in several different groups both in Finland and abroad and gained appreciation as a versatile and talented jazzmusician. Herrala started his music studies with classical piano in 1986 in the Conservatory of Turku in the instruction of Irma Talvio. Later he continued with classical guitar, bass and finally double bass. Herrala graduated as Master of Music from the jazz department of Sibelius Academy in spring 2010, majoring in double bass. Before graduating he had gained success for example with Tetra and Reactor-5 in Young Nordic Jazz Comets competition.
Today Ville Herrala is one the most employed and versatile jazzmusicians in Finland. He approaches his instrument from various different perspectives. He has been playing with i.a. Jukka Perko, Severi Pyysalo, Jukkis Uotila, Eero Koivistoinen, Otto Donner, Jarmo Savolainen, UMO and Karita Mattila. He has also worked with many international stars of jazz, for example with Jerry Bergonzi, Phil Markovitz, John Tchicai and Cuong Vu.
Libero Mureddu, piano
Mureddu, born in Milan in 1975, studied at the Conservatorio G. Verdi in Milan and at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. He lives in Helsinki.
Mureddu is a pianist, improvisor, composer and music technologist. He combines elements of improvised music, algorithms and artificial intelligence to create conditions of performativity to enable the unexpected and innovative. He regularly performs with other musicians of contemporary and improvised music, including Ensemble Septad, Chamber Music from Mars. He teaches free and electroacoustic improvisation at the Sibelius Academy.
https://www.liberomureddu.com/
Els Vandeweyer, vibraphone
Vandeweyer, born 1982 in Belgium, studied classical percussion in Antwerp and jazz vibraphone in Brussels and Oslo. She lives in Berlin.
The vibraphonist is a composer-performer, soloist and ensemble player for improvised and contemporary music and is extraordinarily inventive in her playing. She works with well-known improvisation artists and regularly performs internationally at festivals and in her current adopted home of Berlin. Here, among other performances, she presented her work Landscape, in which a 25-metre-long piece of fabric serves as a mobile graphic score.
Harri Sjöström, saxophones
Harri Sjöström, born in Turku, Finland, found his voice in music on the soprano and sopranino saxophone.
His music and fine art studies at Lone Mountain College, University of San Francisco and San Francisco Art Institute in the 1970s led him directly to workshops by John Cage, Bill Dixon, Vinko Globokar, George Russell, and his saxophone teachers Leo Wright and Steve Lacy.
Since 1978 continuous extensive work as a freelance musician, composer and initiator of interdisciplinary ensembles in the field of contemporary improvised music and mixed media projects.
Back to Europe 1978 he started to work with Derek Bailey, Teppo Hauta-aho, Paul Lovens, John Russell, Paul Rutherford, Alexander von Schlippenbach a.m.o.
In 1980 -1985 he lived in Vienna, Austria, which became his doorway to the European contemporary music scene; formed his first groups and organized numerous artist exchange-projects in Finland and elsewhere.
Between 1990 and 2016 an extensive collaboration with the pianist and composer Cecil Taylor developed, including seven live recordings with small and larger Cecil Taylor ensembles. Of particular note is the Cecil Taylor Quintet with Cecil Taylor – Teppo Hauta-aho – Tristan Honsinger – Paul Lovens – Harri Sjöström. Energetic and with an appetite for risk he founded and co-founded many ensembles with highly interesting instrumental line-ups including such as Quintet Moderne / Sestetto Internazionale, MOVE / European Composers Improvisors Orchestra pool – ECIO / Up And Out – vario project / City Of Pyramids / The Player Is / Motström / Flight Mode a.o.
Open and joyfull cooperation with numerous renowned innovative musicians and composers in the field of contemporary improvised music; founder and artistic director of the SoundScapes festival, an international platform for improvised music since 2016. soundscape-series.com/; Teaching saxophone since 1980 and a vital member of the European contemporary improvised music scene; he has composed music for film and is still active today with his photography.
www.harrisjostrom.com
www.soundscape-series.com
https://harrisjostrom.bandcamp.com/