Saga & Jarmo Saari Solu feat. Antti Lötjönen

Saga

Tapani Rinne: bass clarinet and electronics
Ulf Krokfors: double bass
Markku Ounaskari: drums

At the concert on 16 March, powerful emotions will be experienced as Saga’s three musicians (Tapani Rinne, Ulf Krokfors and Markku Ounaskari) present their shared musical world to the audience in a compelling premiere performance.

The Finland-Swedish poet Gunnar Björling described his artistic philosophy with the words “my language is not in the words” (“mitt språk är ej i orden”). In the same way, musicians who think alike recognise one another: behind the sounds there is something “broader,” something that connects. “We three of us in Saga recognise this in each other and are excited to, for the first time in this concert, take the audience into our world — a world that reveals what lies behind the performance.”

Photos: Sakari Puhakka

Jarmo Saari Solu feat. Antti Lötjönen

Jarmo Saari: guitars
Antti Lötjönen: double bass
Teemu Korpipää: mixing

Jarmo Saari Solu is an experimental one-man solo project that sounds like a full orchestra. A pioneer of real-time looping and guitar colourism, Saari has performed solo in Finland and internationally, as far as Japan. Rockadillo released the first of three Solu albums in 2004. With that experimental record, Saari sought to bring the electric guitar into the 21st century. After several years of silence, Solu returned to the stage in 2023 with a renewed repertoire.

Jarmo Saari (b. 1970) is one of the most distinctive guitarists of his generation. The musician–composer–producer, who has performed in more than thirty countries and appeared on over one hundred albums, was awarded the Suomi Price in 2012 for his artistic achievements. He is known for the visual compositional style he has created for concerts, films, television, choreography, theatre and recordings, as well as for his multi-layered collages crafted with electric guitar, the human voice and a variety of rarer instruments such as the theremin, baroque cello and glass harp.

On March 16, 2026, at the Hietsu is Happening! concert, Saari once again paints with a broad brush and, for the first time, combines his creative palette with Antti Lötjönen.

Photo: Tero Vuorinen

The concert is organized in collaboration with the Hietsu Is Happening! concert series.

The concert is supported by City of Helsinki, Svenska Kulturfonden and The Finnish Music Foundation.