Aija Puurtinen

Tags delete artist / delete experimental / delete alternative / delete pop more tags..

Location: Helsinki, Finland

Multidimensional Aija Puurtinen composes moods and plays by dividing her voice between different roles. On "Redlight", her third solo album, Aija works as a duo with different instrumentalists.
Since 1982, Aija "Honey B." Puurtinen has been been a formidable force, not only in her native Finland but all across Europe as a vocalist-bassist of Honey B. and the T-Bones, the band she founded together with Esa Kuloniemi (guitars, vocals), and with whom she have been the consistent core of the band throughout the years. They began as a semi-traditional blues group, offering a mix of covers and original songs performed with a distinctive style. Deeply attuned to current music trends as well as the blues traditions, they took no hostages in their incendiary arrival on the scene. The smoky range of Puurtinen's vocals, which can vary from a fluid blues howl to Afro-pop and jazz scatting, and the naturalistic mastery of Kuloniemi's instrument of choice proved a killer combination that has expanded and improved in leaps over the following decades and produced 12 albums. Alongside the band, Puurtinen has been a vocalist-composer as well as fearless performer in experimental blues and jazz shows alongside the renowned KLF, UMO Jazz Orchestra, Riku Niemi Orchestra, Teppo Hauta-aho and others as far as in Asia and North America. Puurtinen produced the 2006 album Miero by Finnish folk sensation Värttinä. She has been composing music for films and theater, Philomela Choir, modern chamber music for Zagros Ensemble and released three solo albums on her own, of which 2009 album Redlight is the newest.