Anssi Mänttäri’s portrait of saxophone player and composer Eero Koivistoinen manages to convey in less than an hour a decent picture of his multifaceted musicianship (ranging from jazz to pop songs, film music and choral works), wild productivity (in his own words: "if you shoot enough, you sometimes hit") and international career, which has taken him around the world from his native Kotka. In this documentary riddled with generous archival material we hear Koivistoinen’s own musings as well as testimonies from Finnish and international colleagues. Plenty of time is spent on Africa, a continent that grew more and more important to Koivistoinen during the 2000s: finally we return to Finland, to the stage of a Helsinki jazz club, where Koivistoinen’s band together with Senegalese master drummers play the Finnish traditional Paimensoitto, while Mänttäri superimposes a montage of footage from travels in Africa, as if to remind us where it all began.
Koivistoinen is centrally featured also in Lasse Keso’s brilliant TV work Jatsit (2000), which lets us hear thoughts about playing and playing itself from a veritable all-star lineup of Finnish jazz: sitting in are among others Juhani Aaltonen, Claes Andersson, Raoul Björkenheim, Iro Haarla, Jenny Robson, Jone Takamäki, Jukkis Uotila, as well as two elder statesmen, Erik Lindström and Goony Strömmer. (HT Nuotio)
Language: Finnish, subtitles: English / Finnish, no subtitles
In the presence of Lasse Keso, Eero Koivistoinen, Anssi Mänttäri