Silva Kallionpää Quartet

The violin is one of the original jazz instruments and in the early years of jazz was also an important solo instrument, represented by its own swinging superstars. Since then, the importance of the violin has diminished somewhat, though there have been those in France and the United States who have established long careers.  At Tampere Jazz Happening, they have dropped in over the years, including Billy Bang, Charles Burnham, Regina Carter, Mark Feldman, Leroy Jenkins, Carla Kihlstedt, Mat Maneri, and Jenny Scheinman — some with their own signature bands.

But Silva Kallionpää from Helsinki is the first Finnish violinist specializing in jazz to perform her own music at Tampere Jazz Happening with her own line-up and compositions. Have they been on offer, then? Hardly ever, and Silva Kallionpää Quartet is still a relatively new phenomenon, even on her album. She has only released her first album, Unadaptable, a little more than a year ago, in April 2022. 

According to Kallionpää, the first impulse in her compositions is often some feeling or insight, a concrete situation in her own life. “On the other hand,” she says, “what I’ve been thinking of while composing isn’t very important in terms of the outcome. What matters is the listener’s experience, and there is no right or wrong interpretation.”