Olli Hirvonen

Guitarist Olli Hirvonen leans into the roots of Americana to tailor his Nordic sound on his new trio recording, Kielo

The guitar is an instrument capable of expression in myriad ways. From the roots twang to the distorted overdrive, the guitar is the perfect vehicle for the delivery of the strikingly eclectic music of Olli Hirvonen. His new recording, Kielo, finds Hirvonen and his longstanding trio of Marty Kenney and Nathan Ellman-Bell focusing on the myriad possibilities inherent in the six strings, especially as the Nordic ethereality of the leader’s music becomes more and more enmeshed in the roots sounds of his adopted home in the United States.

Hirvonen’s guitar sound has its roots in his origins in Finland, where he was able to soak up the Nordic flavors of jazz, progressive rock, and metal. After finishing his studies at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Hirvonen moved to New York City in 2011 to study at the Manhattan School of Music, where received his master’s degree. He since has made New York his home and has found opportunities as a freelance musician, but most notably as a member of Brian Krock’s bands, Big Heart Machine and Liddle.

The most enduring partnerships that Hirvonen created have been with the members of his trio, bassist Marty Kenney and drummer Nathan Ellman-Bell. Hirvonen assembled the trio in 2014, first playing straight ahead jazz but then delving further and further into improv and noise, where they really forged a bond and musical trust.

During the lockdown that was brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic, Hirvonen began to plot a new recording. He decided to focus on the trio, as they were the core of Hirvonen’s last two recordings, New Helsinki (2017) and Displace (2019).

Hirvonen also wanted to focus on the breadth of the guitar’s expression, including adding some slide guitar, an instrument he had been experimenting with since the beginning of the pandemic, and Kenney’s Fender Bass VI, a thin necked six string bass guitar that is tuned an octave below a normal guitar. The sound of the Bass VI provided a certain Americana sounds associated with country and alternative music, which had been gaining more ground in Hirvonen’s sound identity.

For the recording, Hirvonen wanted to get his group together in a single room without separation, just playing together without headphones and recording to analog tape to achieve a live, more full sound (a vinyl edition of Kielo will be available). Having not written much during the height of the pandemic, Hirvonen wrote the entire program for Kielo in the month and a half leading up to the recording. The trio came together in January 2022 at the Bunker Studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

The recording begins with the title track. Its simple folk-like melody provides a melancholy but warm soundscape to set an ambiance for the program. Inspired by one of the best ensembles melding jazz and Americana, namely the Brian Blade Fellowship, “Erode” is a perfect example of improvisation coming together with slow-burn shoe gaze rock. “Outline” is characterized by quiet intensity created by the interplay between muted bass and the guitar, taking inspiration from author Rachel Cusk’s trilogy of novels of the same name. The feel of Baroque counterpoint inspires “Current,” a piece that uses Bach as a starting point before blossoming into a spacious indie rock vibe.

“Placeholder” is a pointillistic palate cleanser that builds and builds around Ellman-Bells’s insistent drumming. Originally inspired by singer-songwriter Cassandra Jenkins, the heavy feel of “Lento” is laden by a counterpoint of a descending bass line fusing with the guitar and a dynamic guitar solo feature. Hirvonen channels the dread of the pandemic years into “Unceasing,” his yearning slide guitar crying over the tune’s ominous harmonies. The recording concludes with a cover of Big Thief’s “Vegas,” a piece Hirvonen fell in love with after performing it at a friend’s wedding. Here his open tuning leads to a lush, vast panorama of guitar and Bass VI, ending the recording on a positive note.

The music that Olli Hirvonen makes is indebted to sounds that he absorbed from his youth in Finland. The Nordic feel that he brought from Europe has now been merged with the Americana influences of his new home, leading to the wonderful, earthy sound that can be heard on Hirvonen’s new recording, Kielo.

About Olli Hirvonen

Finnish-born, Brooklyn-based virtuoso, the go-to guitarist for acclaimed bandleader Brian Krock, seeks common ground between Tim Berne, Ralph Towner, Deep Purple and other longtime inspirations

On Displace, his latest album and first for Ropeadope, the Finnish-born, Brooklyn-based guitarist Olli Hirvonen introduces a highly personal, pathbreaking vision of guitar heroism. The virtuosic rapid-fire phrasing of Pat Metheny, John McLaughlin and Larry Coryell meet the complex compositional ideas of Tim Berne and Matt Mitchell. The immersive sonics of My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields share space with meditative acoustic soundscapes that call to mind Ralph Towner and Oregon. Postbop and prog influences press up against Hirvonen’s years in a noise-rock outfit. 

When Hirvonen mentions how much he digs Ben Monder, it yields an Aha! moment—not because he sounds so much like Ben, but because they’re both similarly complete musicians: technical masters who employ chops only in the service of good ideas; jazz guitarists who view rock as a great musical and sonic concept rather than an excuse to turn up. What else would you expect from a victor of the prestigious Socar Montreux Jazz Electric Guitar Competition who grew up obsessed with Deep Purple? 

The full breadth of Hirvonen’s voyage comes into play on Displace, a quartet album with pianist Luke Marantz, bassist Marty Kenney and drummer Nathan Ellman-Bell. But rather than a pointed, willful fusion of disparate genres, Hirvonen’s mission is to meld the different music he loves—and yes, that includes not only Deep Purple but Iron Maiden too—as organically as possible. “I started finally accepting my different influences from back in the day,” explains the guitarist, 30. “I wasn’t consciously trying to combine everything. I was more just accepting what is already there.” 

Among the most crucial releases in Hirvonen’s journey is his 2017 disc, New Helsinki (Edition), a work of cutting-edge contemporary postbop featuring Walter Smith III and Adam O’Farrill. Another is his auspicious debut as a bandleader, 2014’s Detachment, released the same year he toured the U.S. as the Finlandia Foundation’s Performer of the Year. Yet another contains ferociously ambient improvised noise-rock—the 2015 EP by Red Reiter, featuring the guitar provocateur Brandon Seabrook. Hirvonen, Kenney and Ellman-Bell made up the core of Red Reiter, whose intuitive rapport expanded to include Marantz on New Helsinki.   

Perhaps equally important are his collaborations with the saxophonist and bandleader Brian Krock. Hirvonen is an invaluable presence in both Krock’s small group, liddle, and his audacious large ensemble, Big Heart Machine, as critics have noted. “Hirvonen again adds outsized blasts of electric guitar, lending no-wave flair,” DownBeat wrote in its review of liddle’s new self-titled record, which also touts Kenney, Ellman-Bell and Matt Mitchell on keys. “Hirvonen’s work on the guitar can stand in the front with more assuredness, becoming more of a fixture than a feature,” Nextbop commented in its writeup of the same album. 

In some fashion, Displace is an amalgam of all these recordings, and a document of a still-rising generation of young, forward-leaning New York-based musicians invested in jazz, metal, new music and more—a clique of artists “who aren’t afraid to combine things and take risks,” as the guitarist puts it. 

But in the end, Hirvonen’s music is its own island. Displace kicks off with “No Light,” which commences with a snowballing piano rumble and opens up into a kinetic demonstration of electro-acoustic fusion. (Put Hirvonen’s performance here alongside any classic early jazz-rock LP; it stacks up.) Sometimes Hirvonen uses his Fender Jazzmaster solidbody electric as Leo Fender intended, for plucking stout single-note phrases. At other times, as on the cathartic postrock of “Displace,” he taps into the instrument’s history of strummy, stormy avant-rock textures.    

The noir-tinged rhythmic games of “Nondescript”—Ellman-Bell’s elastic mastery is worth a close listen here—leads to the Berne-ian through-composition of “Size Constancy.” “Faction” is a frighteningly challenging piece, spilling over with polyrhythms and knotty unison lines and shifting sections, yet it somehow doesn’t feel clinical. “Tactile,” which finds inspiration in Dave Holland’s writing, conjures up a mesmeric, minimalist bedrock, with rhythmic and melodic components layered on top. “Unravel,” a fount of pretty, pastoral acoustic melody and genteel Towner-esque arpeggiation, serves to cut the compositional tension elsewhere on the album. Throughout Displace, the band demonstrates deep listening and thoughtful reacting. While the influences might pull from all contemporary corners, the ensemble dynamic is undeniably rooted in jazz interplay. 

Hirvonen started studying classical guitar in Finland when he was 9, which helped him develop an ability to sight-read that continues to be an asset today; in New York, he’s a go-to guy for composers looking to test out demanding new music. He received his first electric guitar a year later, and became enamored of Deep Purple’s Ritchie Blackmore. (In fact, one of his earliest bands played nothing but Deep Purple.) A guitar teacher introduced him to jazz in high school, and slowly but surely he became immersed in the music. His late teen years, as well as his undergrad tenure at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, where his mentors included Raoul Björkenheim, were all about internalizing the bebop language, and he spent many hours absorbing George Benson, Grant Green and the like. 

In 2011 he moved to New York to pursue his master’s at Manhattan School of Music, and his creative world opened up. He met many of the comrades he continues to gig with today, studied classical composition and electro-acoustic music, and discovered the thriving avant-garde. That meant the outré side of jazz and classical, sure, but also Nels Cline, Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth and other explorers.  

After earning his master’s in 2013, he worked hard and smart on the New York scene and beyond. In 2016 he won first prize at the Montreux guitar competition, where his solidbody Fender and fiery expressiveness made an impression on the head judge, John McLaughlin. He’s gigged at some of world’s most respected venues and festivals, among them Pori Jazz, the Kennedy Center and the Jazz Gallery. 

Despite such achievements, when he speaks about Displace, Hirvonen summons up nothing but humility. “I’m trying to be as honest as I can,” he says, “with regard to what my playing is and what my history is.”