Iiro Rantala has worked on Mozart, Gershwin and John Lennon intensively and beautifully on albums as well as live. He has been touring the world solo and with orchestra for decades and has written European music history in the piano trio. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung attested to his "intelligence, humour, a lot of sentiment, unpredictable ideas and the finest piano craft";Jazz Thing spoke of a "natural phenomenon on the keys". After a decade and a half, the Finnish pianist Iiro Rantala is now returning to his roots.
It is the first time since the dissolution of his cult band Trio Töykeät in 2008 that Rantala presents his music again in the format of a classical piano trio. With Trio Töykeät, he turned the European jazz world upside down from 1988 onwards and, along with the Esbjörn Svensson Trio, was considered the hottest trio on the continent. Since the dissolution of the group, Rantala has been looking for the ideal formation — a long-standing search that has now come to an end with the HEL Trio.
As fellow musicians, he is supported by two congenial improvisers and partners, on the one hand, the British bassist Conor Chaplin, a member of the band with the Mercury Prize-nominated band Dinosaur. On the other hand, the Swedish-Norwegian drummer Anton Eger, one of the most dazzling drummer personalities of the European jazz scene. Where exactly the musical journey with the HEL Trio will go, he left open for a long time. But anyone who knows Rantala, the classically trained master pianist with a mischievous streak, knows that one can expect virtuosity from him with catchy and comprehensible melodies, serious music without any holy seriousness and with lots of surprising twists and turns. Entertaining and rousing performances between classical and jazz, fiery as hell (perhaps that's why the trio's name) and presented with a lot of humor, are guaranteed.
In recent years, Rantala has performed in a wide variety of constellations, solo, with string ensemble, in duo and trio with other pianists and various band formats. His return to the piano trio should not be missed.

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