Tallinn Music Week returns with sets from Roomet Jakapi, Kemaca Kinetic and more

Moving around from its accustomed March date in 2020, ‘21, and now ‘22, Tallinn Music Week now seems to have permanently relocated to May, as the 2023 edition is already booked for this later month. The ‘22 placement meant that the Jazzkaar festival, which concluded only four days earlier, elected not to present its usual showcase evening. This year was the turn of Philly Joe’s Jazz Bar (the wonderfully located basement den on Freedom Square) to programme two nights of international acts. This made for an engaging change, but who knows what will happen next year?

Jazz and improvisation was also present elsewhere, as one of TMW’s most startling sets happened on the borders of the Telliskivi Creative City, at Uus Laine, a venue that boasts the biggest mirrorball in Estonia, plus the fantasy aura of a 1970s Indian disco-brothel. The free-form vocalist Roomet Jakapi was suitably attired, in clinging leotard, spidering over a small table full of electronics and plastic toys. The evening was devoted to artists from down in the city of Tartu, which will be a European Capital Of Culture in 2024. Jakapi is a member of the rock-jazz-electronic band Kreatiivmootor, but also has a sideline in solo performance.

His voice was sparse to begin with, sensitised to space and silence, coaxing out a contemplative atmosphere. He indulged in an Eartha Kitt cooing softness, cosmic tendrils facilitated via effects knob-twiddling. Rising to a gabble, over phased songbird trilling, chimes were warped, as Jakapi pursued subtle tracks through the magic forest. Looped fragmentation patterns curled around this highly alternative Bobby McFerrin being, awash with bendy harmonics.

Back at Philly Joe’s, the Danish trio of Kemaca Kinetic explored the range of electric guitar and bass, with drums, making a refreshing change from the almost-dreaded piano trio infestation. The Kinetic blend of jazz and rock progginess was just right in its degrees, displaying dynamism and edge, not quite distorto-overloaded, and not quite overly fusioned. Brushes may well have been used, but even these produced a propellant hardness, courtesy of Matias Fischer. Casper Hejlesen’s angular, cyclic guitar riffs could also drift into a spacey zone, though usually rousing again into choppy, trebly patterns, as the three made their vigorous evolution, with powerhouse drum stutters shunting into a jungle groove, and peaking with an arpeggiated guitar aloneness.

The next evening at Philly’s opened with a more conventionally jazzy approach, setting the tone for a less electric set of performers. The Allan Järve Quartet’s trumpeting leader actually softened his opening ‘Set Of Three’ with a flugelhorn, slow and malleable, into the long evening to come. The Estonian Järve played selections from Blinding Yesterday, his new album of original compositions. The omnipresent Janno Trump played electric bass, gradually winding out his lines, while cymbals rode and splashed, piano investigating tranquillity. There was a drum solo unusually early in the set, and Järve’s team provided a very satisfying contrast to the frenetic assertiveness of Kemaca Kinetic.