The time of rigid demarcations between musical genres is over. For those who see music, indeed who love music as a universal language offering unlimited scope for human expression, this can only be a positive development. When one considers the jazz pianists of our time, they have just about all received their grounding in classical music and yet these are musicians who don’t just traverse many different jazz styles – they can also roam at will into other genres. And looking among them, it would be hard to find a pianist as quintessentially complete as Iiro Rantala from Finland.

The 49-year-old, who first studied jazz piano at Finland’s renowned Sibelius Academy in Helsinki and then classical piano at the Manhattan School of Music in New York, has always shown a tendency to regard the entire history of music as a treasure trove which can supply material for his own very personal creations. Right from his first solo album, ‘Lost Heroes’, he was paying tribute not only to jazz legends but also to opera singer Luciano Pavarotti. His album “My History Of Jazz”, released shortly thereafter in 2012, begins with Johann Sebastian Bach and with every justification.

One aspect of Rantala’s activity which has been consistent, alongside his succession of wide-ranging and surprising projects – such as his John Lennon homage, or his cycle of the seasons, ‘My Finnish Calendar’, or his first opera ‘Sanatorio Express’, premiered in 2018 – is his regular work with classical orchestras. Since 2017, Rantala has had a particularly fruitful cooperation with The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, one of the world’s leading chamber orchestras, a group which inspires audiences all over the world with its unique way of making music. The award-winning ensemble’s preference for crossover projects is also one of its distinguishing traits, which means that Rantala and Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen are definitely on the same musical wavelength.