Jukka Perko, sax
Toomas Keski-Säntti, piano
Eero Seppä, bass
Teppo Mäkynen, drums

Known as ‘Bird’, sax player Charlie Parker was one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time. He was a brilliant improviser, a revolutionary in his genre and, along with Dizzy Gillespie, an important developer of the bebop style in 1940s New York.

Sax player Jukka Perko adopted features of Parker’s style in his teens, and this eventually led to him being engaged in Dizzy Gillespie’s orchestra. Perko’s playing was so dazzling that he was compared to the young Charlie Parker and dubbed ‘Little Bird’.

In the 1940s, chamber orchestra arrangements of old American show tunes were custom-made for Parker. The material for these arrangements was lost for decades but rediscovered in a basement in New York a few years ago.
This concert features those arrangements in their original splendour, showing a seamless blend of chamber orchestra and jazz quartet.