The Weaver, Every So Often Shifting the Sands Beneath Her

The elusive prime transient, disoriented. 

Pulling apart the threads to find new answers 
– and new questions to ask.

I’ve for long thought that if one listens deeply enough, music is like a transparent mirror: a brutally honest lens through which to reflect both inward and outward.

For me as composer and performer, this has meant that – admittedly, to various degrees of success – I try to listen deeply to what the music asks of me at any given moment: what is necessary?

“The Weaver, Every So Often Shifting the Sands Beneath Her” – the third movement of Three Seconds | Kolme Toista and the second video and single from the album – was no exception. Written in parallel with “The Veil”, both movements started to whisper (even scream, at times) in my ear not only what was necessary as far as the instrumentation of the suite, but beyond that, which particular musician should play each instrument.

As the fragments of the puzzle started to come together, it became crystal clear that the bass parts needed to be played by no one other than my longtime dear friend KYLE MILES, whose deep musicianship and presence I’d learned so much from, having played with him since 2009 or so. From the moment he signed on, writing the bass parts for the suite – “The Weaver” and the fourth movement “Verso” in particular – was pure joy, as I could imagine exactly what was now possible. I’ve always felt that Kyle and I have an unspoken understanding on many levels, and having him join the nonet felt like the family was complete. 

In my conversations with our drummer VANCIL COOPER I’d gone on and on about the music asking for “earth”, “weight” and “ground”, but “The Weaver” brought with it another unexpected element: water. As so many other things that seemed to appear from something subconscious in the writing of this music, I don’t know where the visual came from, but in describing what I was envisioning with the coda of this movement, for some reason I kept coming back to water, the ocean, and the feeling of washing ashore, which Vancil’s improvisation, colored by KEITA OGAWA’s percussion magic, captured more vividly than I could have imagined.

– A purification ritual before turning a new leaf with “Verso”, perhaps?

The Veil

A prologue to the unseen. 

The intertwined threads of two parallel designs, 
a third as their composite, 
each a distinct but symbiotic other.

It is not lost on me that at the exact moment that I release a piece of music entitled The Veil – with artwork of my own face behind a weave of threads, no less – people all over Iran are erupting in protests against the regime’s murder of Mahsa Amini.

The internet in Iran has been shut down to prevent news getting out uncensored, and more people have been killed.

Mahsa Amini’s death is not an exception to a rule. She is only the latest widely known victim of the regime’s repression of women’s rights in the name of religious orthodoxy. 

Although in my piece a veil symbolizes something that had prevented one from seeing recurring patterns and designs for what they were/are – it certainly was not conceived as an allegory to the hijab – today, I dedicate the piece to the women of Iran, and the women elsewhere in the world fighting for their rights and equality.

Perhaps we all need to pull the veil from before our eyes and begin to finally dare to look at – and see – one another.

If you’ve been reading my newsletters in the past weeks and watching the Three Seconds | Kolme Toista preview videos, by now you will know that the music of this album did not reveal itself easily.

It was December 2020 when, after almost 8 months of wrestling with myself in the eerie calm of the pandemic – in my basement in Boston, in isolation at a cottage by Lake Saimaa in Eastern Finland, and again in my basement in Boston – and trying in vain to piece together the tiniest fragments of a puzzle without anything but a somewhat irrational instinct that the pieces somehow will fit – how, and into what, I had no idea – that finally, a breakthrough came.

I had been stuck for months looking for… something. This particular night, feeling frustrated, I started to do something I had never done before, and began to improvise with Arabic orchestral sounds on my midi keyboard. 

I don’t quite know what happened, but after I came to, I realized I had written something unlike anything I’d done before, and although I understood there was much work ahead, the entire album concept came into focus – and more than that, alive – in an instant.

After so many years, the creative block was gone.

(Also, I had just gone from what I thought would be a quintet album to nonet in a matter of hours. Ah, the logistics that lie ahead…)

Listening back now, for me, The Veil is the original knot at the heart of Three Seconds | Kolme Toista, to where all its many intertwined and entangled threads can be traced, equal shades Pablo Casals, Dmitri Shostakovich, Umm Kulthum | أم كلثوم, John Coltrane, Ali Farka Touré, Paco de Lucía, Roy Hargrove and Tool. It is perhaps the most personally meaningful piece I have composed.

And so… Three Seconds | Kolme Toista begins.

Thank You for listening.

Warmth,

Jussi

Shedding Skin: A New Year, A New Look

Dear Friends,

2018 was a year of major change for me – changes personal, interpersonal, musical – so it seems only appropriate to move forward into the new year with a new public skin as well. After 7 years, I figured a makeover of my website was… perhaps more than a little overdue.

– especially since I cut my hair. Two years ago.

So, welcome to the brand new jussireijonen.com!

This new site is definitely more modern and user-friendly than my old one, so I’ll be sharing content here much more actively than before.

As a channel to process, while I continue to work on new music, I decided to add this blog section to the site, so I’ll be sharing thoughts here from the trail as they occur to me. Hot topics in circulation currently that most likely will be resurfacing in my ramblings:

Third Culture identity
3:2 / Ternary vs. Binary
Alexander Technique
Balance
Intonation / Resonance

Meanwhile, do feel free to browse around the site, and be sure check out some of the incredible new music that I’ve had the honor to have played on by Louis de Mieulle & Matt Garstka (Animals as Leaders), Gabriela Martina and Meridian 71, and drop me a line in the Contact section.

There is also a Store section that I’ll keep adding stuff to as it comes to me; if you don’t already have a copy of “un”, you know where to find it.

On the live front, you can catch me onstage around the US with our new quintet Sawaari, Newpoli, Gabriela Martina and others.

So… stay Tuned, much new to come!

-J