© Tanja Ahola

Saxophonist Jukka Perko (born 1968) was only a teenager when he played his way into the hearts of audiences in Pori Jazz Festival 1986. The following year he received an invitation to join the ranks of Dizzy Gillespie’s 70th Anniversary Big Band on tour. These days the jazz rhythmics and free flow of ideas that define Perko’s art come together with the heartbeat of traditional Finnish music from the powerful harmony of hymns to the tangos of Olavi Virta.

For Jukka Perko, music is existence. He learned to play as he learned to speak, by listening and mimicking. Perko approaches music from silence and describes his attitude towards playing and composing as balancing between perfectionism and coming to terms with incompleteness. That is perhaps the reason why his notes ring with what some might call grace.