The music of Finnish pianist Iiro Rantala can sometimes be difficult to place within the canon. Equally at home tearing it up in a small intimate jazz club as performing with an orchestra in a prestigious concert hall, he will often thread together musical styles as diverse as Baroque, soul jazz and Latin within the course of a single piece. Back home in Finland he has presented comedy shows on TV, and his ear for the absurd often reminds me of another great musical individualist, the late Frank Zappa.
This new trio, formed shortly before the pandemic, is Rantala’s first conventional piano trio since the demise of the much-loved Trio Töykeät in 2006. Taking its name from the IATA code for the international airport where most of Rantala’s musical journeys begin, the original lineup featured Rantala (piano) with Anton Eger (drums) and former E.S.T. backbone Dan Berglund. When Berglund’s impossibly busy diary prevented him from making it to the warm-up dates, Eger suggested the UK’s very own Conor Chaplin (bass) as a replacement. The two are of course regular bandmates in Marius Neset’s group and have a well developed musical understanding, and crucially they’re both sufficiently quick-footed to follow Rantala’s mercurial moves.
Fans of Trio Töykeät will enjoy hearing “Met By Chance” and “Gadd A Tee” re-worked as “Cabaret Perdu” and “Tee Four Three”, while the bright and bouncy title-track is itself a reference to Gadd and Tee’s early-‘80s super-trio Stuff. Rantala’s cascading solo leans heavily into the bluesy gospel stylings of hero Oscar Peterson, Eger’s complex rhythmic divisions probing all the while at Chaplin’s solid groove. The carefully choreographed fight scene of “Tae Kwon Don’t” suddenly breaks out into a tango, and almost as incongruous is the clash of explosive off-kilter rhythms and fast be-bop on “Will You Be My Bop?”, a virtuosic performance that recalls Chick Corea’s Akoustic Band at their best.
Yet the album is not without its reflective moments – the melancholia of “Stockholm Syndrome” salutes Rantala’s lost friend Esbjörn Svensson, its suggestive title and slightly clichéd tropes hinting that it may be time for a generation of players to escape the late pianist’s grip. The irony-free romanticism of “Second Date Waltz” and “A Lotta Love” (written for his wife) find the leader digging deep into his emotional reserves, and they’re a brilliant reminder of the largely self-taught Rantala’s strengths as a story-teller. Closing out in party style with a cover of Jaco Pastorius’ funky “Liberty City” from the bassist’s 1981 album Word Of Mouth, Mathias Heise (harmonica) joins the fray to turn the trio into a quartet. The ease with which he fits into the ensemble suggests further collaborations might follow, but for the time being Tough Stuff is a triumphant return for Rantala to a classic format.
