Composer-pianist Heikki Sarmanto is one of the most well-known and productive Finnish jazz ambassadors. His composition Opuscule won an award at the International Jazz Composition Contest in 1961 in Minneapolis. In 1971 he won the first place award at the Montreux Jazz Festival in both the piano and the band play series. He has performed and recorded all around the world and in 1988 the Suomi Symphony production premiered at New York’s famous Carnegie Hall. Sarmanto received the Pro Finlandia award in 2009.
Singer Pamela Kilpeläinen has a reputation as a strong and soulful interpreter of music. She holds a Master of Arts degree in Musicology and sings in seven languages. Pamela has studied classical singing with different vocal instructors and her versatile song repertoire covers a variety of genres, such as jazz, blues, soul, bossa nova and French chanson. Her collaboration with Sarmanto began in 2005 and their album When I Was With You was released in 2006. The album was a hit with both the critics and the consumers, and in its wake Kilpeläinen and Sarmanto have performed together as a duo as well as with Sarmanto Band, for soon-to-be two decades. The Stjärnenatten album celebrates their long lasting and fruitful collaboration.
Poetry has always been among the main sources of inspiration for Sarmanto. Additionally he is a self-professed advocate for melody. It’s that characteristic which explains why a lot of singing based on the poetry of many Finnish national poets appears in his works.
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