THE JUKKIS UOTILA BAND
The last appearance with my own group was a concert at the Chamber Music Hall of the Sibelius-Academy in Helsinki on the 25th of March. It was a piano tribute to McCoy Tyner. Besides Herbie Hancock, McCoy is probably the musician that's influenced my musical thinking the most. In this concert I actually tried to recapture his stylings from 1962 to 1978. We started with the early 60's Impulse! recordings, play tunes from the classic "Real McCoy"-release and on to the 1970's Milestone recordings. My trio featured Jussi Lehtonen on drums and William Tarvainen on bass. Joonatan Rautio was featured on tenor and soprano sax on the quartet tunes. It certainly was aa memorable evening!
As for concerts of my own music, last year's gig at the Kalliojärvi Jazz & Blues festival (Aug 9th, 2008) brings up nice memories. With me I had the usual suspects; Joonatan Rautio-tenor sax, Jussi Lehtonen-drums, Mongo Aaltonen-percussion and this time subbing on bass, Ville Herrala. Did music from my piano-CD "Meninas" with some more recent compositions added. Had great fun and got to play for a surprisingly large audience, more than 600 people!...The same group played at the opening of a new monthly jazzclub on September 4th, 2008 at Restaurant Pääposti (the big Post office building) in Helsinki...Look for the local advertising for further gigs...
In the recent years I’ve been juggling two constellations that both feature me as a pianist. I started out in 2001 by playing with drummer Jussi Lehtonen, electric bassist Timo Hirvonen, guitarist Teemu Viinikainen and most often Marc Bernstein on sax. To play music from my Meninas CD, I put together another more acoustic group: Joonatan Rautio-tenor sax, Christian Spering or Martin Sjöstedt-bass, Jussi Lehtonen-drums and Abdissa Assefa or Mongo Aaltonen-percussion. Both these groups are available for bookings at: avenida@kolumbus.fi