Tapani Rinne
Tapani Rinne (born February 2, 1962) is a Finnish musician, composer, record producer and sound designer, who is known for his experimental and innovative style with the clarinet and saxophone. It has earned him a reputation as one of the most respected and unique Nordic instrumentalists. Rinne is most widely recognized as the foreman of the pioneering Finnish electro jazz group RinneRadio, but he has an established solo career with several albums of his own, too. As a record producer he has been also responsible for several albums made together with the Sámi yoik singer Wimme Saari as well as for the albums Kielo (1999) and Kluster (2002) by the experimental accordionist Kimmo Pohjonen. Besides his solo career as a recording artist and numerous other artist collaborations, Rinne has composed music and soundscapes for theater, radio plays, documentaries, films, art exhibitions, contemporary circus shows and dance performances. Author Petri Silas wrote about Tapani Rinne as a musician the following way in the 5th edition of Finnish Jazz published by Finnish Music Information Centre in 1998: “One of the most successful category-smashers in contemporary jazz, Tapani Rinne has carefully steered his career from one victory to another. His eccentric mix of trad jazz, fragile ambient soundscapes and hard-driving techno, hip hop and drum’n’bass beats in the group RinneRadio has paved the way to stardom both nationally and internationally.” Biography As a solo artist Tapani Rinne has been an avid student of clarinets and saxophones since the age of eight. He started his musical career in the sax section of the Pori Big Band in 1974 and studied clarinet at the prestigious Sibelius Academy in Helsinki between 1981 and 1986. In the 1980s, Tapani Rinne was playing as one of the members in Edward Vesala Sound & Fury on the album Lumi (1986) as well as in Raoul Björkenheim’s group Krakatau on the album Ritual (1988). He was also developing his talent among the ranks of UMO Jazz Orchestra, Espoo Big Band and the EBU Big Band. During those years Vesala encouraged Rinne to launch a project of his own and thus RinneRadio was born. Vesala was responsible also for the production of RinneRadio's self-titled debut album in 1988. The solo career as a recording artist started in 1999 with the release of his debut solo album Insider. Tapani Rinne has released four albums since that. Musically they are all ambient-based, while the fourth Radioton album from 2019 was described as a dive directly into the deep layers of minimal ambient creating a breathlike soothing soundscape brainstorming with only a bass clarinet and effect pedals. His fifth album Foghornia was released on Signature Dark label in October 2020 picking up where the previous one left off, said to dig even deeper into melancholic depths of dark ambient music. With RinneRadio RinneRadio is a pioneering Finnish electro jazz group, which Tapani Rinne founded in 1988. They are best known for fusing jazz into ambient music and techno, years before it became a worldwide