Jukka Eskola has quickly risen to be a key figure in the Finnish dancefloor jazz scene. Most of you know him, of course, from the Five Corners Quintet and his own ensemble, the Jukka Eskola Quintet. Aside from those projects, there has also been simply too many others to mention. I had a chat with Jukka in Jyväskylä, on the first night of his quintet’s Finnish tour.
Beyondjazz (Matti): How are you doing?
Jukka Eskola: Just fine, thanks. Getting ready for the first gig of our tour, we’ve got seven more to go after this one. The Jazz Bar in Jyväskylä is a great place to start from.
What kind of expectations do you have for the tour?
Great expectations, I’d say. We had a really good gig in Helsinki at club Wahoo! a week ago. We did this same tour [of the Finnish Jazz Federation] a year ago with Teddy Rok Seven, and it’s always a pleasure to play all these fine venues.
You are known as one of the most hard working guys in the scene, and you’ve been involved in a wide variety of projects. How did your own quintet initially take form?
It was a pretty easy process after my album came out [on Free Agent Records, 2005]. All these guys were involved in the recording sessions and people just started asking whether it would be possible to get this band to do some gigs, and of course it was. The tracks had been basically recorded live in the studio, more or less, so it wasn’t a hard transition to take it on stage. Our first gigs were in Japan, actually. I hadn’t really thought of putting together a touring live band prior to the release of the album, but it all happened quite naturally after that.
The album did quite well, right?
Yes, very. I didn’t expect anything special to come out of it, at all. After all, I didn’t have a name for myself outside the immediate circle of musicians before that, so I was very pleased to note how well it sold by the standards of jazz records, especially in Europe and Japan. Of course the release of the Five Corners album around that time gave it boost as well.
Let’s talk about the significance of Japan early on in your solo career. You just talked about touring there and your latest release, Hub Up [Stride Records, 2006], was exclusively released there.
That’s correct. To be honest with you, I owe all that to Ricky-Tick Records and their contacts. They released my first single before the album and that went over well in Japan. Then Impartmaint Records and their sub-label Stride contacted me and asked about the possibility to release the album in Japan, which they did when it came out. Stride really put an effort into promoting the record and of course people bought it after being told to do so repeatedly. (laughs)
Are there plans to release Hub Up in Europe later on?
Well, I don’t think so. There was actually a label here in Finland who wanted to release it earlier, but I didn’t think it would have been such a good idea. I mean, the session was originally done for [a Finnish broadcasting company] YLE for radio use, and that was fine as such. I wasn’t so much into releasing it in Finland, but when the people at Stride in Japan insisted on putting it out there, I simply couldn’t refuse. To tell you the truth, I was a bit excited to have a mention of a Japanese exclusive in my CV. I just somehow liked the idea plus it was easy because all the recordings had been already done.
You might actually be the only jazz artist from Finland so far to release an exclusive album in Japan.
Yes, all I know is that there certainly haven’t been a lot of those! I just think it’s a funny little chapter in my career, and all the positive feedback from Japan is always a nice thing.
There have already been some rumours regarding the release of your next full-length. When can we expect to hear some new stuff?
I’m planning to do another one in the near future but it’s not happening anytime soon, though. It would be great to get something out during next year. I know there are people out there expecting a new album, and it’s definitely in my agenda, but the plans are only at a very preliminary stage so far. Teppo [Mäkynen] is going to produce it but the sound is probably going to be different than on the previous one.
Could you elaborate on that, please?
Well, we’re planning to do a bunch of syrupy pop-ballads. Just kidding! (laughs)
These are just my initial thoughts, but it might involve a bigger orchestra, maybe a string section somewhere, and we’re probably moving the sound towards the CTI end of things, I guess.
Sounds interesting. We could then talk about the jazz scene in a broader sense. How do you, as one of its key figures, see the contemporary “dancefloor jazz” scene, both here in Finland and internationally as well?
Clearly it’s a scene that has been on the rise recently and I’m truly hoping that the trend continues. There’s always flux within music and things tend to go up and down at varying intervals. Like I said, I hope that the good times continue and I see the DJs and clubs that champion these sounds as being a key element in the preservation and evolution of contemporary jazz. I think it’s also great that young people taking an active part in the jazzy club culture get to hear music by the classic artists they wouldn’t have discovered otherwise. They’re probably not going to go to a record store to pick up a Horace Silver album, but they hear these sounds being played by the DJs and like it nevertheless. Essentially it’s great that the DJ culture and live bands can support each others.
I cannot resist to chat about the Five Corners Quintet just briefly. How are things looking there?
Well, it’s already clear that the project has shaped up to be much more than was originally planned, and there have been some talks regarding the direction it’s going to take in the near future. After all, it’s already a year now since the release of the LP. We’re definitely planning to keep it going, and if possible, the live band that has been touring rather extensively this year, would also play a bigger role in the studio. That all still depends on Tuomas Kallio, of course, since he is the one who has been the project’s musical director right from the beginning. All of us musicians hope that we could be more of a part of the recording process, too. We are going to keep gigging and there are already bookings for next year as well, so we’re not likely to quit that anytime soon. Hopefully we’ll be able to do some new stuff pretty soon, too.
As per usual, I’m going to ask you something completely peripheral to end our chat with. I’ve been noticing lately that many Finnish jazz musicians have a rather “uniquely similar” style of doing strange and often long chats between tracks while on stage. I’m beginning to think there’s a whole section devoted to that in the jazz institutions’ curriculum here. Care to comment?
Well, there haven’t been any workshops on the issue so far - maybe that’s a more likely reason for it! (laughs) I see Teppo Mäkynen as carrying the torch in that field, there aren’t really others who can cut it like him. I just usually try to get it over with as soon as possible and get back into playing. But it’s an important part of doing gigs, I suppose, and perhaps the audience can also get a hint of the players’ personality via those small moments. It also helps to keep things casual enough, with only a slight danger of sliding into the genre of stand-up comedy.
OK, that’s about it. Thank you very much!
Yes, no problem, and thank you.
After our “official” interview, we continue to chat about this and that. It seems that next year is going to be big in the scene and for Jukka as well. He mentions Ricky-Tick as being the label to keep an eye on in 2007 as well, with the releases of Timo Lassy’s debut and possibly even something fresh from the Five Corners, not to mention his own quintet. Sounds promising.
I think we’re safe to assume that good things are going to be abound as long as people like Jukka Eskola are responsible for taking jazz forward.
