“To listen to this record is to hear an entire atlas of musical voices...
This is not quotation or pastiche — it is absorption.
sayr: salt | thirst is less an album than a statement of artistic identity:
uncompromising, borderless, and profoundly human.”
“★★★★★”
Originally inspired by the archaic sound and feel of a late-1940s Gibson LG-2 steel-string acoustic guitar generously gifted to him by a former student, Jussi Reijonen’s sayr is a new series of intimate, improvised solo recordings centered around a metaphorical reframing of the concept of “sayr” as found in Arabic music — literally, “course” or “motion” –, referring here to a musical pathway unfolding through improvisation in a memory palace of sound.
The series will be launched with a double release of two albums, sayr: salt | thirst and sayr: kaiho – live in Helsinki on October 24th, 2025 via Reijonen’s own label unmusic.
As Reijonen says, “I have of late found myself drawn to solitary reflection and introspection: to the small, simple and sparse, the rugged earthy, the gnarly unpretty; and most of all, to bare feet in soil; to roots and branches; to paths less – or differently – predetermined. sayr has become a kind of musical diary: an ever-growing, ever-evolving musical organism that is like a metaphorically Arabic taqsim-inspired solo improvisation through time, place and memory.”
Like rooms in a memory palace, sayr uses a set of musical gestures as loci or touchstones. Reijonen navigates freely between them through improvisation, letting memories surface through the sounds themselves. Each gestural locus becomes a portal, awakening acoustemological imagines shaped by his life across Northern Finland, Jordan, Tanzania, Oman, Lebanon, and the United States: mirrored echoes of Frances A. Yates’ “forms, marks, simulacra of what we wish to remember” refracting in reverse in the space between sound and personal experience.
sayr will not be available for streaming in full.
180g Green Vinyl LP | CD Digipak | Digital
sayr: salt | thirst was recorded in one fully improvised take at Reijonen’s home studio on steel-string acoustic guitar one afternoon in March 2025 and is split into two contrasting arcs, “salt” and “thirst” as on two sides of a vinyl LP.
The performance weaves textural references of various string instruments from around the world – the guitar, the Finnish kantele, the Arabic oud, the Moroccan sintir, and the West African kora – into a compelling whole refracting echoes of Hamza El Din, Farid al-Atrash, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Ali Farka Touré, Toumani Diabaté, Mahmoud Guinia, Paco de Lucía, Umm Kulthum, Fairuz and Camarón de la Isla, with the musical form unfolding a personal narrative that vacillates between lament, unease, brightening and transformation.
Performed on steel-string acoustic guitar and the Arabic ‘ud and recorded and filmed live in concert in Helsinki, Finland, on September 19th, 2025, sayr: kaiho is divided into three arcs – “halla” (“frost” in Finnish); “fes” (in homage to the Moroccan medina where he bought his first oud); and “vielä” (“yet” in Finnish).
With “kaiho” referring to longing or nostalgia in Finnish – akin to “saudade” in Portuguese and Galician –, the live recording highlights to stunning effect Reijonen’s deep relationships with the sonorities of two string instruments that not only have become so entangled with his own memories, but also share between them a deep historical lineage.
Photograph © Ville Tanttu 2025.
Born in Rovaniemi, a small town on the Arctic Circle in Finnish Lapland, fretted/fretless guitarist and ‘ud player Jussi Reijonen is truly a product of liminal spaces.
Having grown up in Finland, Jordan, Tanzania, Oman and Lebanon, and spending much of his adulthood in the United States, Jussi has lived a life soaking up sounds, sights, scents and shades of Nordic, Arabic, African and North American aesthetics and expression, all of which are reflected in his creative work as composer and performer.
Jussi’s debut album un | ان [unmusic 2013] was released to great critical acclaim, with Guitar Player magazine referring to it as “extraordinary music” and Lucid Culture calling it a “still, spacious, slowly unwinding masterpiece”. The album was nominated for an Independent Music Award in 2014.
His 2022 album Three Seconds | Kolme Toista [Challenge Records International 2022] introduced his nonet with Jason Palmer (USA), Bulut Gülen (Turkey), Layth Sidiq (Jordan/Iraq), Naseem Alatrash (Palestine), Utar Artun (Turkey), Kyle Miles (USA), Keita Ogawa (Japan) and Vancil Cooper (USA) and was nothing short of an artistic triumph. Described as “unlike anything in memory… creates a new, genre-less, form… spellbinding from beginning to end, and full of virtuoso performances… one of the best recordings of 2022” by AllAboutJazz and “a stunner… a unified, diverse, overwhelming statement” by JazzTimes, the album has been a major international critical success, receiving 5-star reviews and being selected as Best Creative Albums of 2022 by AllAboutJazz and Best Jazz Albums of 2022 by Glide Magazine.
His Three Seconds | Kolme Toista nonet was chosen as a Jazzahead! 2023 official showcase artist.
In 2025, he announced his latest project sayr, a series of completely improvised solo recordings exploring the small, simple and sparse, the rugged earthy, the gnarly unpretty; and most of all, bare feet in soil; roots and branches; and paths less – or differently – predetermined. The series will be launched with a double release of two albums, sayr: salt | thirst and sayr: kaiho – live in Helsinki on October 24th, 2025 via his own label unmusic.
“Unlike anything in memory... creates a new, genre-less, form.”
Alongside his work as leader, Jussi has collaborated with a diverse array of world-renowned artists, including Jack DeJohnette, Robin Eubanks, Pepe de Lucía, Simon Shaheen, Bassam Saba, Arto Tunçboyacıyan, Hüsnu Şenlendirici, The New York Gypsy All-Stars, Javier Limón, Dave Weckl and David Fiuczynski among others, and has been a member of the New York Arabic Orchestra (NYAO).
He has performed extensively at prestigious festivals and venues throughout the United States like Lincoln Center and the Library of Congress, as well as in Finland, Sweden, Latvia, Switzerland, Austria, The Netherlands, Germany, France, Canada, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates.
A summa cum laude graduate of Berklee College of Music (B.M. ‘11) and New England Conservatory of Music (M.M. ‘13) in Boston, he is currently pursuing his doctorate at Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki, where he also teaches.
“A single, unified, diverse, overwhelming statement.”
GEORG LEITNER PRODUCTIONS GmbH
Walter Laurer
wlaurer@glp.at
UNMUSIC
Jussi Reijonen
info@jussireijonen.com
Pre-order exclusively on Indiegogo starting Tuesday, August 5th 2025!