Janne Mark & Verneri Pohjola & Gospel Helsinki Ensemble

Janne Mark is a Danish singer and songwriter, a pioneer of a new kind of church music and an internationally respected jazz musician.

For years, she has worked as a church musician at Brorsons Kirke in Copenhagen, known for its experimental culture and jazz music, and has written and composed new hymns and spiritual songs. Many of Mark’s folk jazz-style hymns have established their place as part of the modern Danish collective singing repertoire.

Called a kaleidoscopic pilgrim of time, space and art, Janne Mark creates and performs music that is simultaneously modern and traditional, light and heavy, heavenly and earthly, airy and dense. Music that is both and, just like the world, man and his soul are basically.

In a rare Finnish concert, the strains of Mark’s and her Danish faithless days resonate with the airy trumpet playing of Verneri Pohjola, the multidimensional Gospel Helsinki Ensemble’s tonal singing and the unique architecture of the Temppeliaukio Church.

The concert will feature music from Mark’s critically acclaimed albums Pilgrim (2018) and Kontinent (2020), released by the well-known German jazz label ACT.

The concert is organized in cooperation with the Töölö parish.

Photo: Kristoffer Juel

The concert is supported by the City of Helsinki, Svenska Kulturfonden, Music Finland LIVE (Music Promotion Foundation) and the Finnish-Danish Cultural Foundation.