JUSSI REIJONEN

SAYR: SALT/THIRST

UNMusic

Jussi Reijonen, Acoustic guitar.

Here is an album featuring solo guitar, presented by Finnish-born Jussi Reijonen who is also an Arabic oud player and composer.  He offers us a dual-movement suite of music.  The first part falls under the category of ‘Salt’ and the second part under ‘Thirst.’

One afternoon in March of this year, he began recording this improvised work in his home studio. Influenced by his love of steel-string guitar, the oud, the Finnish Kantele, the West African kora and the Moroccan sintir (a 3-stringed lute), on this project he is only playing acoustic guitar. His love of acoustic guitar and these string instruments, infused with his talents as a masterful guitarist and multi-instrumentalist, lends itself to developing the two subjects in his album title.

“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,” Jussi Reijonen very poetically muses and reflects on his creative process.

“Salt” includes four suites: Sola, Sarvi, Sae and Keinu.  In these four suites, Reijonen resolves to find a pathway of memory, recalled and reimagined through his improvised music. He processes his creativity between sound and his personal life experiences. The simplicity of only one instrument, stroking the ear like fingertips, is both soothing and intoxicating.  His melodic approach holds my attention, along with the interspersing of various international instruments. Each tune is meant to be a portal that triggers emotional and sensory perceptions by the listener.

This album is totally different from Reijonen’s ambitious 2022 “Three Seconds/Kolme Toista” music, meant to explain his childhood spent on the Arctic Circle in Northern Finland, the Middle East and East Africa, along with thirteen years spent in America.

“I think of “sayr” as an evolving musical diary, which creates the space for both personal reflection, as well as discovering and exploring new musical ideas; over this past year of working with the concept, I’ve already discovered many new seeds that I am now watering with my next ensemble compositions that seem to point towards a next evolution of what we started with “Three Seconds,” Jussi takes time to explain his journey and musical path.

“I really cherish the immediacy and honesty of “sayr:” The only edits done with this first recording were the removal of me sneezing once, and dividing it into two arcs, (The salt and the thirst) instead of just one 40-minute track,”

This solo work is totally different from anything this artist has recorded in the past.  It is both captivating and intriguing, while reflecting a world soundscape with a solo perspective. This is a sneak peek. It will become available to the public on October 24, 2025.

Reviewed by Dee Dee McNeil

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