SIMM Series - Musicians Union Hall
Outsound Presents @ Musicians Union Hall
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7:30 PM Heikki Koskinen Ensemble
Timothy Orr drums, Rent Romus - saxophones, Jason Hoopes - double bass
Heikki Koskinen - piano, recorder, Morrison Digital Trumpet
8:30 PM Winant/Allen/Miller
Josh Allen - tenor saxophone, Mark Miller - drums, William Winant - drums

The Heikki Koskinen Ensemble will be fresh meeting of musical minds. Heikki connected with sax player Rent Romus a while back, their Finnish roots bringing them together, resulting in recent exciting musical duo excursions. For this performance Heikki has planned to dip into old Finnish music as well as a few original melodies, but the heart of the music making will be born out of the moment. Timothy Orr, on drums, and Jason Hoopes, on upright bass, will round out the quartet bringing their wonderful expert musical talents together for the first time in this combination. Looking forward to a trip to many musical landscapes!
Heikki Koskinen is a recording artist, composer, and educator currently living in San Francisco. Chosen in "Rytmi" magazine critics polls as Finland’s top jazz trumpet player in the 1970’s, he left his native Finland to study jazz at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Heikki’s music career began in Finland with playing American Soul music as well as free improvised jazz, with musicians such as Edward Vesala, Juhani Aaltonen, and Heikki Sarmanto. Heikki is the recipient of several Finnish composing grants, recorded several albums, and won awards as an innovative children’s music teacher. His 1980’s Bay Area bands, with Heikki on trumpet, featured such musicians as Hadley Caliman, Steve Heckman, Mark Levine, Joe Bonner, Bennie Green, Larry Hancock and Michael Spiro. Lately Heikki has re-connected with his free improvising musical roots, especially with Bay Area sax player Rent Romus and the Finnish “Kellari (Cellar) Trio”, featuring reed player Mikko Innanen and bassist Teppo Hauta-aho. Heikki’s main instruments these days are piano, the Morrison Digital Trumpet as well as tenor recorder. Besides performing and composing, he teaches music in the Bay Area.


Josh Allen has created his own personal language on the tenor saxophone, with an emphasis on polytonal and asymmetrical phrasing, as well as extending the range and sonic ability of the instrument. He does this with constant emphasis and study of the overtone series, and the generation of multiphonics from the application of this process. He is currently teaching Fellowship students at the Brubeck Institute at the University of Pacific. He was born in Berkeley, California in 1972. Like many of today’s prominent musicians, Mr. Allen was a product of the Berkeley public school system, studying saxophone starting at the age of nine under Phil Hardymon. He went on to study with such prominent Bay Area musicians as Bill Aron, Joe Henderson, and Rory Snyder. With his focus squarely on jazz composition and performance, Mr. Allen moved to Southern California in the early nineties to study with Rick Helzer at San Diego State. He became active in the Latin Jazz community, and worked with various musicians such as Dennis Chambers, and Eddie Palmieri. Mr. Allen’s return to the Bay Area in the mid 90s to finish his Bachelors degree at Sonoma State. His association with saxophonist Marco Eneidi led to working relationships with musicians such as Glen Spearmann, Matthew Goodheart, Damon Smith, and eventually Cecil Taylor.

Cost: $10 gen $8 stu/sen

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