Juhani Aaltonen, tenor saxophone, flute and alto flute
Reggie Workman, bass and percussion, and
Andrew Cyrille, drums
Reflections can be seen as a companion to “Strings Revisited”
(TUM CD 003), which featured a trio comprised of Juhani Aaltonen
exclusively on tenor saxophone, Reggie Workman on bass and Andrew
Cyrille on drums together with The Avanti! Chamber Orchestra conducted
by Henrik Otto Donner. While “Strings Revisited” had
a chamber orchestra playing fully notated music virtually all the
time and, therefore, restricted Aaltonen, Workman and Cyrille into
improvising within the space provided by the arrangements, the music
on this recording is improvised within only a loose compositional
framework that leaves much freedom to the musicians. Composed themes
are used only as a starting point and, with the exception of Andrew
Cyrille’s composition “The Navigator”, there are
no pre-conceived arrangements. The recording features three giants
of improvised music in an open dialogue built on both their shared
influences and their different backgrounds.
Reflections was recorded at Finnvox in Helsinki, Finland, on November
23, 2002 (tracks 1-6) with Dan Tigerstedt as the recording engineer,
and at the Chamber Music Hall of the Finlandia House in Helsinki,
Finland, on November 22, 2002 (track 7) by Esa Santonen. The recording
was mixed by Henrik Otto Donner and Esa Santonen at DER in Tammisaari,
Finland.