Intro

The UMO Helsinki Jazz Orchestra will bring a breath of Spain to April Jazz Festival. Full size big band, top flamenco music and flamenco dance experts from Spain, and a flamenco dance group of young Finns join their forces and show their talent at the gigantic stage of the Dance House Helsinki.

The Flamenco Big Band concert brings together fiery flamenco with cool, swinging modern jazz. Perico Sambeat, one of Spain’s top jazz musicians, performs as saxophone soloist and conductor together with UMO and two three top class flamenco musicians: the singer Alba Carmona and the cajónista David Domínquez from Spain and Finnish flamenco guitarist Joonas Widenius.

The UMO Helsinki Jazz Orchestra is known for breaking new ground, but never in the long history of the orchestra has it performed together with flamenco dancers. In this multi-sensory concert, UMO performs together with the Spanish top flamenco dancer José Manuel Álvarez and the flamenco group of the dance school ToeStar in Lohja. The choreographer is Kirsi Kannas, a dancer, teacher and pioneer of Finnish flamenco. Together, the immensely detailed footwork sections of the dancers, the dark and expressive flamenco singing and the traditional big band form a great rhythm machine, melting the last of the sleet of the Finnish April.

The album Flamenco Big Band from 2008 is Perico Sambeat’s most ambitious effort to combine flamenco elements from Andalusia with the musical language that is closest to his heart, American jazz. Beginning in the middle of the 1990s, Sambeat’s music has been influenced by flamenco and Flamenco Big Band is his first attempt to carry out this vision in the context of a large jazz orchestra. Along with music from the album, the concert programme also contains new music by Sambeat, composed for this performance.

The event is organized by UMO Helsinki Jazz Orchestra.