With reservations, RON JACOBS recommends a deep dive into the nature, history, and mindset of US intelligence
A marvel of musical transmigration
[Ville .fi/Creative Commons] 
JOHN HAWKINS wrestles with the anti-humanist fantasies of techno-feudalist thinking
MICHAL BONCZA and MARIA DUARTE review 2000 Meters to Andriivka, Savages, The Legend of Ochi, and The Naked Gun
GORDON PARSONS advises you to get up to speed on obscure ancient ceremonies to grasp this interpretation of a late Shakespearean tragi-comedy
DENNIS BROE enjoys the political edge of a series that unmasks British imperialism, resonates with the present and has been buried by Disney
STEVE JOHNSON speaks to DJ and singer/songwriter Mark Radcliffe
Iro Haarla
Northbound
(ECM)
IRO HAARLA was born in 1956 in Tampere, Finland, 70 miles north of Helsinki. After school she studied classical piano and composition at Helsinki’s Sibelius Academy, where she also discovered an empathy with great jazz pianists like Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans and the Canadian Paul Bley.
She identified strongly with Bley’s “silence and dissonance.”
Haarla met the Finnish jazz drummer, later her husband, Edward Vesala, in 1978 and put aside her classical ambitions, joining his ensemble Sound and Fury as arranger and self-taught harpist, bringing a new architecture to his music.
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