Espoo Big Band & Sakari Kukko - Finnish Characters & Moonlight Caravan (2021)

Sakari Kukko (b. 1953) is known, of all things, as the founder of the versatile world music group Piirpauke. The saxophone player has however all the time had his right foot strongly on the ground of jazz music and Piirpauke has also used some elements from jazz such as improvisation. The other founding memebers of the group, Hasse Walli, Antti Hytti and Jukka Wasama, were big names on the field of Finnish jazz in 1970s. Piirpauke, founded in 1974, has been one of the most productive groups of Finnish rhythm music - so far they've released over 20 albums.

Kukko graduated from high school in 1973 and studied right after graduation a few years in Sibelius Academy, the same time taking private composing lessons from Edward Vesala. Already in 1976 Kukko proved his influence on the Finnish jazz field as he received the Finnish Jazz Federation's Georgie (Yrjö) Award. In 1982-1992 Kukko lived in Spain but was seen and heard on the music field of Finland regularly. Besides Piirpauke, Kukko composed a series of folk-jazz music for Espoo Big Band that released the series on the album Moonlight Caravan & Finnish Characters (EBB 1990). After returning to Finland Kukko moved to his home district Kainuu and performed, besides Piirpauke, with freejazz percussionist Jouni Kesti.

In the beginning of the 21st century Kukko did a brand new annexation and formed a jazz quartet with Samuli Mikkonen, Ulf Krokfors and Mika Kallio. The expression of the group was acoustic ensemble jazz but the repertoire consisted of Finnish psalms. The album Virret (engl. Psalms) (Rockadillo 2001) was a great success and definitely one of the most successful Finnish jazzalbums that year. The next move of the quartet was to work with not so famous christmas songs and the next album Joulu (Rockadillo 2003) was a stylish continuation for the first album.

In the 21st century Kukko's main group, Piirpauke, has maintained a good pace of releasing new material and the group has released a new album almost every year. At the same time the saxophonist has featured on many albums of Finnish jazz and rock bands, such as Amorphis and Kingston Wall. Kukko was also one of the founding members in Vintage Sax Quartet that played their debut gig on Turku Jazz in 2003.