Iiro Rantala New Trio | en

Iiro Rantala (b. January 19, 1970) began his piano studies at the Käpylä Music Institute and went on to study at the Oulunkylä Pop/Jazz Institute and the Jazz Department of the Sibelius Academy. His musical education also included studying classical piano at the Manhattan School of Music for two years beginning in 1991. Iiro Rantala is best known as the founder and pianist of Trio Töykeät, Finland's most famous jazz band. The Trio has given over 2,500 performances in 50 different countries spread over five continents - a formidable achievement.

Exploring the boundaries between musical genres is characteristic of Iiro Rantala's artist personality. He has appeared in Finland with symphony orchestras, performing the Cartoon Concerto by Riku Niemi and Rhapsody in Blue by Gershwin.

iiro Rantala, piano, studied at the Sibelius Academy and Oulunkyla Jazz Conservatorium in Helsinki, as well as at the Manhattan School of Music in NYC (1991-1993). The development of iiro Rantala as a jazz thinker has been one of the most astonishing phenomena in the Finnish music world during the last six years. Winner of all the major jazz awards in Finland in recent years. Rantala is also a virtuso classical pianist and performs regularly with symphony orchestras in Finland, works like the Mozart No.23 piano concerto, and iiro's own piano concerto was premiered in Finland in April 2003 with the Tapiola Sinfonietta. iiro is also intense engaged with music for children's theatre.

Among the most internationally visible Finnish jazz musicians, Iiro Rantala is second to none when it comes to unsurpassable keyboard technique and flaring showmanship. The piano player first got infected by music in the children's choir Cantores Minores at the age of seven. Soon afterwards he was already taking piano lessons... And the rest, as the cliché goes, is history.

In 1983 Rantala enrolled at the Pop & Jazz Conservatory and began to take private lessons from Seppo Kantonen. Soon Rantala began to get gigs with various pop and dance groups, and took his first steps as a performing jazz musician in the ranks of the Big Bad Family. In 1988 Rantala enrolled at the Sibelius Academy and founded Trio Töykeät, the outrageously original group which was to become one of the biggest success stories of Finnish jazz -- both locally and abroad.


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