Mikko Pettinen Why Not - Patient Patient (2025) [Hi-Res]

Paraphrasing the slogan of the great film critic Peter von Bagh (1943–2014): “movies are greater than life”. The same applies to great works of music. However, here I find myself writing on with the inescapability to connect Patient Patient to the life events of “the main character”. Look only at the titles of the tunes: Waiting List; Lumbar Punkture or We Don’t Work That Way! Explanations come easily from last two years of the life of the band leader, composer, trumpetist and vocalist Mikko Pettinen.

After his family members convinced that there is some involuntary problem with Mikko’s hearing and after numerous medical tests a rare of the rarest diagnosis was given to him: he is suffering from superficial siderosis. One person in three million will develop a neurodegenerative condition caused by an accumulation of hemosiderin on the surfaces of
the brain and spinal cord. So, to get proper treatment in the Finnish public health care system you have to both get a place in the waiting list and start a career of being a patient, with utmost patience.

Christiane Kokko, a widow of a victim of superficial siderosis (track 3!) sent Mikko a whatsapp message: “Can you focus on what you can do with what you have… and adapt, adapt?” On his daily riding with his e-bike, the phrase started to have its rhythmic sense (track 2). Another of my personal favourites on this album is Lumbar Punkture: an
improvised piece of music preceeded by Mikko telling the band members, how painful the procedure was! “Mikko, give us something to start with!” wished one band member. “Ok, let’s start with G”. What follows is a highly unexpected and powerful avantgarde jazz piece by the Why Not Quartet!

Musically justified rapid mood changes and unpredictability are characteristic of this album. How else would it be with taking one’s painful process from unrecognizable symptoms through diagnosis and two operations to realizing that none of us really know what waits
us around the corner, so to speak. As an artist Mikko Pettinen has amazed me for quite awhile. Since 1998 he has permanently been playing horns in UMO Helsinki Jazz Orchestra. He is heading the funk and soul music oriented Funky Finns ensemble – performing all the vocal, keyboard and
trumpet parts. I am eagerly waiting his collaboration with Dutch pianist Merlijn Angad Gaur on Sketches, Songs and Improvisations to see a physical daylight.

Returning to the beginning, although the life events of the band leader are the starting point of this music, music travels beyond anything else in its own mysterious ways. Essentially, this is a band album of a working quartet since 2018. Four talented musicians create an ensemble sound by listening to each other’s playing and giving their individual best. Joakim “Jusu” Berghäll has gradually become a very strong baritone saxophone
and bass clarinet soloist (check e.g. Iron Head). Vesa Ojaniemi is a creative soloist and with Tuomas Timonen gives the quartet a strong rhythmic soundscape. Mikko Pettinen is concentrating here on playing cornet. Influences coming from Miles Davis and Tomasz
Stanko are recognizable, but not in any disturbing way. There is an unavoidable sonority of Finnish melodicism which is nowhere else to be found.

Adapting to the necessities in life might seem to be a dull affair, it does not have to exclude innovations in music. It can lead to revelatory innovations in life as well. “After all, now I see more clearly that this day at hand is all there really is”, maintains Mikko, in the sincerest way of a jazz artist. This music speaks for itself and is highly recommended by
the Jazz Archbishop of Finland.

Markku Salo.