Joona Toivanen Trio: Flower Power.

The Joona Toivanen Trio play the 4MBS Performance Studio on Sunday.

Piano, bass and drums combo The Joona Toivanen Trio are currently jazzin’ through their Australian performance debut.

The young Nordic Jazz Cats are pianist Joona Toivanen, bassist Tapani Toivanen and drummer Olavi Louhivuori.

This talented and versatile trio have a skilful grip on the art of improvisation and know how to deliver a great mix of original compositions. At times a melancholic vibe or an air of gladness and joy touches their material. Beauty!

The guys have been living the jazz dream since 1997. The dream appeared in technicolour metaphorically speaking when they produced their first album release Numurkah then won a Scandinavian jazz competition in 2000. Now their music has a global outreach, their career has enjoyed a positive spin and there’s a new album called Lumous, meaning charm in the market place.

Joona has fond memories of the first album/title track and he laughs as he reveals the Australian connection.

“It happened this way”, he says. “Me and Olavi were jammin’ and he came up with a bass riff, and I sketched the melody on it. We had to figure out a name for it then one day at Olavi’s place we found a fridge magnet on the refrigerator tor door and I think it was like white magnet with a few flowers and the text Numurkah. We had no idea what it meant. We thought it was some ancient language meaning love or happiness or something so we thought it’s a great name, we’ll take it! It is also interesting the way the magnet got there. Olavi’s sister had been an exchange student in Australia and had visited the Victorian town of Numurkah.”