Something Else returns with a double-bill featuring improvised music, contemporary dance, and Mexican son jarocho music and percussive dance (zapateado). A new music-dance trio meeting between Grisell Macdonel (bass), Paola Nieto (zapateado), and Wilson Tanner Smith (cello) is followed by a son jarocho trio with Grisel, Paola, and Kenji Perez Nagano. All three are members of Jaranas del Norte, a Helsinki-based group playing African/Caribbean/indigenous/Spanish-infused son jarocho music from Veracruz, Mexico
Free entry, suggested donation €5-€20 (mobilepay or cash)
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About:
GRISELL MACDONEL-KVIST (Mex. Fin) is musicologist, double bass player, and leonista. Grisell studied double bass at the Music Faculty of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and she obtained her M.A. in musicology in the University of Helsinki where nowadays, she is doctoral researcher. Her first experiences with improvisation took place in Mexico at the Laboratory of musical creation with the composer Julio Estrada. In Finland, she continued exploring the improvisatory capacities of the double bass with the Laponia Improvisations collective. She has performed with the Call us quartet, Korvat Auki Ensemble, and with her band Improvisatrice, among others. Grisell is a member of Auriko música de Lationoamérica and, plays the leona (son jarocho’s bass guitar) and is a singer in the band Jaranas del Norte devoted to son jaocho music.

PAOLA NIETO is a cultural manager and performing artist whose practice intertwines Latin American popular culture, dance, and music traditions into experimental and transcultural contexts. Through this lens, she is developing a sonic and movement proposal based on son jarocho zapateado, an Afro-indigenous dance and foot percussion tradition from Veracruz, Mexico. As a cultural manager, Paola explores alternative and community-based models of cultural organization to foster spaces for intercultural exchange. Find more at paolaelean.com

KENJI PEREZ NAGANO is a musician, DJ and electronic music producer born in Mexico City.

WILSON TANNER SMITH is a cellist, composer, improviser, and music-theatre artist currently based in Helsinki, with roots in the improvised music and performance communities of Chicago. As a cellist/improviser he frequently collaborates across music, theatre, and dance projects, and has performed at venues such as the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Estonia Kontserdisaal, the Ragdale Foundation (Chicago), Deutsches SchauspielHaus (Hamburg), Narva Art Center/Kreenholm Factory, Le Périscope (Lyon), and the Mullbau (Lucerne). He is also a member of the improvising quartet Mad Myth Science, whose debut album was released August 2023 to acclaim from The Wire, the Quietus, Chicago Reader, and Stereogum.
www.wilsontannersmith.com

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SOMETHING ELSE is a concert series for improvised music focused on new meetings of musicians from across Helsinki’s free improv, experimental, jazz, electronic, and global music communities, hosted at Kallio’s Musta Kissa bar. New small-ensemble groupings are highlighted each time, with an emphasis on surprise, difference, curiosity, energy, and connection. Hosted by Wilson Tanner Smith.