Iiro Rantala | Trinity

2+2=3.

The idea is cheeky, but when three such good musicians get together to create something quite unusual, the rules might be broken anyway.

Iiro Rantala and Morten Lund have known each other since the pianist joined the ACT family. Back then, in 2012, Iiro asked the Danish drummer to record "My History of Jazz" with him. "Since then, I have been more convinced than ever that Morten is truly a master of his craft. Back in 2012, Iiro asked the Danish drummer to record "My History of Jazz" with him. "Since then, I've been more convinced than ever that Morten really is the best in Europe when it comes to playing alongside a walking bass. And there is a simple reason for this: he is deeply rooted in Copenhagen's long and illustrious jazz tradition. He has worked with the musicians who played with Dexter Gordon, Stan Getz and Ben Webster, with Ed Thigpen, with Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen and pretty much everyone else ... he's inherited all that history."

As for the double bass player on this album, Kaisa met Iiro at a jam session in Helsinki during Covid. Although she lives in New York, the pianist recently hired her to celebrate Independence Day with him at the Finnish president's residence in Helsinki, Mäntyniemi, in December 2024. "I had never recorded an album of standards with a trio of piano, double bass and drums before," explains the pianist. "Usually we rehearse first ... then we play a few concerts or even go on tour ... we usually rehearse before we record. That wasn't the case this time."

This desire to capture and preserve the freshness and wonder of things done for the first time is in the DNA of the Edition Palmer Collection, a great initiative conceived and co-directed by Thomas Duroux, Director of Château Palmer, and Andreas Brandis, CEO and Producer at ACT, with "Trinity" being the third installment in the series. In 2023, the first meeting between Joachim Kühn and Michael Wollny ("Duo") was a one-off encounter that set the tone. The emphasis of this series is on the expectation that each "Millésime" will be resolutely and unequivocally unique... In 2024, the recording at the Château of Lars Danielsson's trio with Verneri Pohjola and John Parricelli was also the result of the intuition that this combination would be wonderful... All this is very much in keeping with the way Château Palmer makes wine, namely by varying the proportions of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Petit Verdot in the blend of each vintage.

For this trio, iiro has opted for a repertoire of standards. This is a first for him in two respects. "I've been thinking about this for many years. I felt that at some point in my life I had to pay tribute to this repertoire, which is the basics. Just like a classical musician who one day has to deal with the toccatas of Bach or the sonatas of Mozart and Beethoven. However, I think that jazz pianists are generally better off not starting with that. Because the expectations of their predecessors are so high: Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson, Keith Jarrett... But one thing is certain. I wanted to approach the standards without arranging them or, more importantly, without distorting them, without the obsession of wanting to re-harmonize them or feeling the need to turn a waltz into 5/4... I wanted everything to be as reduced as possible, to approach them in the purest way we could." To make this intention even clearer, iiro chose not to seek out rare or forgotten standards, but to revisit some of the best known. He stays as close as possible to their essence and allows the listener to hear the "specific touch" he gives them ... just as a great wine strives to reveal the truth of its "terroir".