Musicians have always faced practical challenges. Time spent working on new songs or rehearsing a band can be curtailed by scheduling dates for a tour, liaising with agents and promoters, or applying for grants. These logistical concerns are that much more pressing when an artist has several groups rather one to manage. Yet there are ways to make tricky itineraries fit together, as saxophonist Adele Sauros explains.
“Basically, it’s demanding when I have a lot of projects where I am in charge of getting the gigs,” she says. “I have to choose which projects I want to concentrate on because I can’t book two of my bands at the same festival. But when I’m part of other projects where I’m not the leader, then it’s no problem. I have a tour with my quartet, then a tour with another band... I enjoy playing lots of gigs with different bands.”
The 34-year-old saxophonist could be speaking for her generation. Spreading oneself across several line-ups is a modus operandi for jazz artists who do not have the luxury of a ‘working band’ that will bring in a steady income to sustain an entire career. It is not just a question of financial gain, though. The multi-group model, whereby a musician may lead or accompany in different contexts, is something that Sauros, an integral part of the Helsinki scene since the mid-2010s, always willingly embraced.
“I wanted to play with many people… it was my goal,” she states. “It was something that naturally happened. I connected with people and played, and projects just started.”
True to her word Sauros has several irons in the fire. She co-leads JAF trio and Katu Kaiku and is also a member of Jonathan Bäckström Quartet and Superposition, with these four bands providing a good summary of both the creative richness and stylistic breadth of contemporary Finnish jazz. Their music draws on the vocabulary of many forms of improvised music, namely acoustic post-bop and avant-garde, with rhythms and harmonies being intricate, unpredictable and sometimes harsh and turbulent, but electric rock riffs and slow-moving ambient soundscapes are also in the mix.
Furthermore, Sauros leads a quartet, her “dream”, which provides a platform for the music “I want to play exactly as I want.” Last year she released her fourth album with the group Your Special Loss, which resoundingly confirmed her growth as a composer able to write intriguing melodies and shifting grooves that can be metrically advanced but also occasionally have folk-pop resonances. Some of her song titles such as ‘Beautiful Anger’ are as the thought-provoking as the notes that define them.
Waiting That Life, Adele Sauros Quartet live at E-studio 2023.
Pianist enamored of saxophone
Sauros’s father may have been source of inspiration in this respect. A guitarist and harmonica player, he also performs spoken word, has worked in theatre, written a book, and makes his own instruments. “I feel I experienced a lot of different stuff through him from a young age,” she notes enthusiastically. “And that’s why I’m really open, and accept different kinds of music and art. Also my mother makes costumes for theatre actors and students, which is interesting job.”
Sauros started learning piano when she was 10, and four years later she entered Pop & Jazz Conservatory in Helsinki. However, it was only when she went to Music High School (Sibelius-lukio) that she became interested in the saxophone, partly because she had friends playing it in the classical field. Without hesitation she recalls the substantial impact the instrument had on her after hearing it on the radio for the first time.
“It’s the sound, the feeling that the sound was just so good that I couldn’t resist it. If I compare it to other wind instruments it has a really wide range of tone, you can express more, you can change the tone, get so many different sounds,” Sauros argues.
Enamored of the saxophone, Sauros studied more, again at Pop & Jazz Conservatory, and Metropolia University of Applied Sciences. And her determination to broaden her knowledge to the fullest extent is borne out by the fact that it took her five years of applications to the prestigious Sibelius Academy before she was admitted. However, she pocketed her bachelor’s degree in two years, then going on to earn a master’s degree. Sauros also had the opportunity to learn abroad, participating in an exchange program at Groningen University in the Netherlands and the Royal Academy in London. Finally, she did the Focus Year at Jazz Campus in Basel, ‘a kind of Monk Institute of Europe.’
These sojourns may have fostered her development, but Sauros is a Finnish musician through and through, and on the subject of turning points in her early years she mentions a performance by an artist who has had a substantial influence on the national scene. “We went to listen to Seppo Kantonen’s solo piano gig when I was maybe 14,” she says. “That stands out. I also remember big band concerts.”
No need to be pigeonholed
Performing regularly with her quartet (Tuomas Timonen, drums, Vesa Ojaniemi, bass, Toomas Keski-Säntti, piano) and as a member of Superposition, Sauros has developed into a notable figure on the Finnish scene, winning plaudits for her strong improvising as well as composing. Influenced by American saxophone masters past and present, from John Coltrane to Walter Smith III, who also leads a stellar contemporary quartet, Sauros is well aware of the need to fulfill the central tenet of jazz: make personal music all the while drawing inspiration from many sources.
That means she is currently listening to anything from Turkish clarinet music to the legendary Cuban composer Benny Moré, but perhaps more importantly she sees herself as a contemporary jazz musician who can relate to the many styles or schools that exist in the music and does not feel the need to be pigeonholed in any particular one. The tone and phrasing she has developed over the years do indeed reflect a comfort with playing chord changes and also working with less defined, more fluid harmony, which can be heard clearly when she is accompanied by drums and bass in a trio. This provides an interesting point of comparison to her work in a quartet.
“I like to play in a trio a lot because I can play more free, I can create the harmonies. It’s also maybe easier to have a conversation with three people,” she explains. “But with piano in the quartet, I can compose different music. I don’t have to be the one in charge of things, saying here is this chord, I don’t have to play so much necessarily.”
“It’s really different,” she continues, not choosing between her children. “I don’t think I like the trio or the quartet more, it’s just that each gives different possibilities to play different music. Some of my quartet tunes wouldn’t work in trio, or maybe they would as they have strong melodies, but it would be a really different sound.”
Towards something new
In any case with the quartet Sauros feels the need to focus on her initial ideas all the while allowing for the possibility of change in the developmental process. It’s about discipline. “I try to make everything as ready as possible before rehearsals because I have this vision and really struggle if I get too many ideas from other people,” she explains. “I tend to lose my original idea and what I wanted, so before I bring the music to the rehearsal, I am trying to think about what I want to try. If I just have melody, bass and chord symbols for piano then there is more freedom, but sometimes I write everything, bass, the voicings for the piano. Sometimes we change the form, changing the order of the parts, or making small structural changes together.”
Interestingly, Sauros feels that the quartet may be reaching the end of its existence because, as is the case for many jazz ensembles, a peak has been reached and won’t be surpassed: “I feel we became almost as good as we can be, and I’m thinking of trying another band. I’m really happy with this band but I want something new.”
That curiosity is important. Sauros recalls how bands such as JAF trio started when she and other musicians played together impromptu, enjoyed the chemistry between them and then sought to develop it rather than following a pre-conceived idea for a group. Indeed, the saxophonist welcomes different personalities, be it “a drummer who plays much less”, or “a pianist with another approach to harmony” to push her towards something new. Although she does intend to record another album with her current quartet Sauros is in the process of searching, taking her time on the next project, or rather letting it materialize organically, rather than rushing into anything.
Potentially challenging times for a vibrant community
Being part of a vibrant community of musicians certainly helps in this regard. Sauros has an interesting point of view on its strengths and occasional weaknesses.
“The jazz scene in Finland is small,” she notes. “Sometimes people from outside, maybe teachers who are visiting…. I felt that they were saying it’s small but it’s really good, it’s still at a high level. For me, it’s small, and it feels like a family, sometimes it feels too small, like it would be nice to experience different voices. As far as styles go then there are all kinds, I mean Sibelius Academy is really focusing on tradition, but then again we also have more experimental people here in Finland.
“I feel like the people I play with are doing a lot of different stuff, like they have a gig where they play really traditional, and then the next day they have a free jazz gig,” she continues. “They are really open minded but still I feel people want to say this musician is only playing free jazz or swing, and that’s not actually true. If someone sees me playing with Superposition, which is more free then they may think ‘oh, she’s this kind of player,’ but when they see me with my quartet it’s like ‘oh, I didn’t know you played this kind of music as well.’ My musicians have to know a lot of different styles, I expect them to be open minded, open to trying out many different things.”
Needless to say, the wealth of excellent jazz that has been produced in Finland for decades, embodied by the likes of Juhani Aaltonen, Iro Haarla and Mikko Innanen, to name but a few, lends credence to her assessment. However, upbeat as Sauros is about the rude health of improvised music in her homeland at the moment, she is mindful of potentially challenging times ahead due to ever louder talk of funding cuts in the cultural sector, which is sadly a trend that is mostly global rather than national.
“My dream is to continue doing what I do,” she says. “But maybe I will not be able to get a grant to make my next album, and a lot of venues were getting support, and now they are not. Maybe they have to stop and then there is less work for musicians. It’s really, really sad because culture is one of the most important things for humans.”
Featured photo: Victor Hege