Concert review | The jazz legend’s and former teen star’s excellent celebratory concert left the audience wanting for information

Concert “Pori Jazz 1984 – Viapori Jazz 2024, Sarah Vaughan & Severi Pyysalo” on Saturday 31.8. Suomenlinna in Tenalji von Fersen. Viapori Jazz software.

“Sesse & Sassy 140 years!”, was the title of Viapori Jazz’s printed handbook. And why not, in principle this was a good reason for one exclamation mark and also for the “celebration concert” announced from the stage.

But did everyone understand what was really celebrated in Suomenlinna’s Tenalji von Fersen on Saturday? And above all, did the singer justify by Sarah Vaughan and vibraphonist Severi Pyysalon The course and program of the “joint” celebratory concert of a title that raises expectations?

Didn’t really justify it.

in Finland singer Sarah Vaughan (1924–1990), who performed for the last time in July 1984, is now one hundred years old. And of course, the handbook also reminded that Vaughan asked Pori Jazz “to take the phenomenal vibraphonist talent he had just heard with him to the main stage and thus accelerated the young man’s career”.

The surprise joint appearance of sixteen-year-old Severi “Sesse” Pyysalo (b. 1967) with the great Sarah “Sassy” Vaughan on the Kirjurinluoto stage in 1984 was a direct sensation, a media phenomenon. And at the same time the impetus to become a teenage star-like vibraphone virtuoso, who made his first own album at the end of the same year. Even its name cleverly declared that Autumn Leaves – Severi Comes.

The performance soon flew Pyysalo to New York, the center of jazz at the time, where he played with a Cuban saxophonist Paquito D’Riveran in the band, at the most central jazz clubs in the million city, for five nights and three sets every night.

in Suomenlinna Pyysalo did not refer to these miracles of forty years ago with a single word, perhaps because he has already had enough of explaining. But now a little reminiscence would have been in order, because it was after all about the concert “Pori Jazz 1984 – Viapori Jazz 2024, Sarah Vaughan & Severi Pyysalo”.

Of course, it would also have been nice to know what Sesse performed there in Pori under the wing of Sassy and how the concert, which has received the wings of the jazz legend over time, progressed. Did Pyysalo call? Stella by Starlight plus one or two of those old loan songs – I Love You, Porgy and Con Alma – which he interpreted now in Suomenlinna with the band without a singer.

And also: was there a jazz singer who joined later Nina Myan in his own selection of six songs, many of the same ones that Vaughan performed in Pori?

Two weeks earlier, in the singer’s thirteen-song concert in Italy, there was only one same song, an old one East Of The Sun (And West Of The Moon). Like everyone else, Mya interpreted it as well as anyone in Finland, perfectly living the role of Vaughan.

Instead of a historical drama or reconstruction, “Pori Jazz 1984 – Viapori Jazz 2024, Sarah Vaughan & Severi Pyysalo” was still “just” a concert, although excellent from start to finish. A special treat was a very rare setting, as two vibraphonists played on stage for part of the time: Pyysalo and Mikko Antila.

Their rivalry with each other in the last song I Cried For You would have listened even longer, and judging by the wide smiles, the feeling was mutual.