Olli-Pekka Tuomisalo released his first album containing only his own compositions

Olli-Pekka Tuomisalo released his first album containing only his own compositions

Olli-Pekka Tuomisalo, saxophonist and doctor of Music is a hard-working pioneer of new music: He has worked with countless composers during his musical career, and around 100 saxophone compositions have been dedicated to him. In terms of music, the infinitely diverse background has inevitably led towards his own composition, and in the course of the 2020s, Tuomisalo has finally had time to write several works inspired by his musician friends. In these tunes you can feel the influences of contemporary classical music, jazz, funk, metal, entertainment and musical theater, filtered into the author’s own sincere tonal language.

Naxos is releasing my new CD ”Lost Saxophone Concertos” in 2018!

This CD includes five saxophone concertos from 1920´s to 1950’s – all premiere recordings. 1) Yrjö Gunaropulos: Saxophone Concerto in C-minor. The 1st sax concerto written in Finland (1935). There was a fire at the composer´s home in 1954 and for over 60 years people thought this work was destroyed. After two decades of indianajonesque adventures I found the original score in November 2016! 2) The first american concerto, written by John Beach Cragun in 1925. This one was also completely lost. I began searching for it actively about 15 years ago and finally found the original score from Chicago in January 2016! 3) Concertino by Leopold van der Pals. He wrote it for Sigurd Raschér in 1938. Raschér performed it with a pianist at the composer´s home but never played it with orchestra. 4) Eilert Lindorff Larsen´s Concerto. A cute 9-minute work, practically never performed in orchestral concerts probably because it´s “too short and too easy”. 5) Concerto by Phyllis Tate. This work, written in 1944, was her breakthrough and was performed about ten times during its first decade but after that disappeared almost completely. One of the greatest concertos for our instrument but perhaps it was written for the “wrong” soloist to be performed more. A female composer at that time might also have been problematic, as well as saxophone teachers not knowing this work and therefore the next generations becoming completely unaware of this gem.