Duo Aleksi Rajala und Florian Dohrmann - Sanaton - Finnish Melancholy and Spanish Expressionism

Aleksi Rajala is a trained guitarist from Finland - the country that has just been named the happiest in the world for the eighth year running. By coincidence, Aleksi has been living in Germany for exactly eight years, and he is homesick. He misses Kotka, Valkmusa, Ruka, Bengtskär - the places of his childhood. So he put them into music. He has written virtuosic yet deeply felt compositions somewhere between instrumental folk, classical and jazz, capturing the mood of those places. He accompanies them with photographs of the landscapes and stories about what he misses, why sauna in Germany is a misunderstanding, and how to defend yourself against Hirvikärpänen - the "flying elk tick".

From the start, he wanted to play his music with a double bassist who understands the feel of the pieces and shares his Finnish sense of humour. Until he found one, Florian Dohrmann stepped up to the bass and keeps turning the sauna hourglass. This trained jazz double bassist has already won the Echo "Klassik ohne Grenzen" award twice with the David Orlowsky Trio - before the prize was discontinued and the trio disbanded.

Plenty of room for new things, including extended sauna sessions where he met Aleksi. It was there that Aleksi stopped him from aimlessly waving a towel around and instead kept pouring water on the stones himself. What does any of this have to do with music? Come and find out.