Ilkka Arola is a Finnish trumpet player and multi-instrumentalist who writes adventure music full of powerful stories, strong rhythms and cinematic soundscapes.

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Ilkka Arola started as a jazz musician but he nowadays sees himself more as a crossover artist always looking for new interesting music to get inspired from. Traveling in Middle East and Africa has had a great impact on his music as well as recognizing his own roots in Nordic culture. His special Quartertone trumpet allows him to play Arabic maqams and other microtonal music. He has released 3 full length albums - From the Depths of the Earth (2017), Land Ahead! (2019), and Blue & Golden (2022) with his group Ilkka Arola Sound Tagine.

 

Ilkka Arola joined the legendary Lapland-Balkan band Jaakko Laitinen ja Väärä Raha in 2018, and has since been touring with the group actively. He is also a founding member of Flame Jazz Records label from Turku. Ilkka Arola completed his Master studies in Aarhus, Denmark in 2016 (The Nordic Master of Global Music) which included intensive field studies in Palestine, Egypt, Mali and India. Before that he studied pop and jazz music and pedagogics in Helsinki Pop & Jazz Conservatory and Helsinki Metropolia the University of Applied Sciences.

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Besides making music, llkka Arola is a passionate photographer with an interest to document the curiosities of human life. He has a dream of combining his two artistic tools, musician's ears with photographer's eyes in his future work.

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