Something Else's 6th edition spans reeds, strings, visuals, and 3 continents in the first meeting between saxophonist Paژuh, visual artist Eevi Oittinen, and cellist Wilson Tanner Smith -- two sets of live music and visuals in Kallio's friendliest bar, Musta Kissa.
Free entry, suggested donation €5-€20 (mobilepay or cash)
About the performers
HAMIDREZA KESHVARPAJUH, or Paژuh, is an artist from Tehran, Iran, whose creative practices span a variety of roles, including saxophonist, producer, improviser, and curator. Rooted in Tehran's alternative music scene, his work resonates across a spectrum of projects, including Obad, Block Project, and Berenj Ensemble. His saxophone playing is a delicate investigation of sound phenomenology, where tone and texture converge into a deeply tactile experience. Sound emerges from the friction between breath, resonance, and the body itself, shaped by a precise sensitivity to dynamics and tonal color. His compositions intertwine influences from minimalism, progressive structures, Nu jazz, and the intricate rhythms and melodies of Middle Eastern music, balancing repetition and variation to evoke a nuanced sense of space and time. Recently, Paژuh has expanded his focus to sound art, reconfiguring the saxophone’s physicality into a fluid, malleable sonic entity. In this new phase, he explores the liminal spaces between sound and silence, using extended techniques to stretch the boundaries of musical syntax and reimagine the interrelationship between voice, instrument, and objects.
https://www.instagram.com/pajuh.works/
EEVI OITTINEN (performative drawing and projectors) is a painter and a visual artist in search of new ways to bring the languages of visual art and music together. Her recent work includes paintings inspired by visual scores and collaborations with improvised music.
https://eevioittinen.com/
WILSON TANNER SMITH is a cellist, composer, improviser, and music-theatre artist currently based in Helsinki. His musical sensibility is informed by free improvisation/free jazz, ambient, DIY and found sounds, and by many cross-cultural/-genre collaborations in his former hometown, Chicago, and more recently across northern/western Europe. He frequently collaborates across music, theatre, and dance projects, and has performed at venues including the Deutsches SchauSpielHaus, Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Estonia Kontserdisaal, Constellation (Chicago), Narva Art Center/Kreenholm Factory, Le Périscope (Lyon), and the Mullbau (Lucerne). He is also a member of the improvising quartet Mad Myth Science, whose debut album was released August 2023 to acclaim from The Wire, the Quietus, Chicago Reader, and Stereogum.
www.wilsontannersmith.com
SOMETHING ELSE is a concert series for improvised music focused on new meetings of musicians from across Helsinki's free improv, experimental, jazz, electronic, and global music communities, hosted at Kallio's Musta Kissa bar. New small-ensemble groupings are highlighted each time, with an emphasis on surprise, difference, curiosity, energy, and connection. Hosted by Wilson Tanner Smith.