This March Jimi Tenor & band return to Berlin for a special live concert at Arkaoda in Neukölln celebrating the release of their new album ‘Selenites, Selenites!’ on Bureau B.
This year, Finnish musician and composer Jimi Tenor celebrated his 60th birthday. He couldn’t have imagined a better place to do so than on stage, and so Tenor came to Hamburg with his band in March, not only to celebrate his personal anniversary, but also to record new music. Partly with Hamburg producer Tobias Levin at his Electric Avenue Studio, and partly at Lauri Kallio’s Kiikala Center of the Universe Studio Complex, ‘Selenites, Selenites!’ – the first album by the Jimi Tenor Band – was recorded in spring 2025.
Tenor can now look back on numerous collaborations, including with Tony Allen, UMO Helsinki Jazz Orchestra, Kabukabu and Freestyle Man. Having attracted considerable attention in the 1990s with his idiosyncratic fusion of lounge jazz and acid techno on Sähko and Warp Records, he turned his attention increasingly to African music in the years that followed. Yet there are no genre boundaries for the multi-instrumentalist – he effortlessly combines a wide variety of styles, from Electronica and Afrobeat to Spiritual Jazz, with his unmistakable musical signature to create a unique musical experience.
During the pandemic years, Tenor decided to look for fellow musicians in his Finnish hometown of Helsinki to form a new band. As it was impossible to go to a rehearsal room or studio, the sessions took place in Jimi’s kitchen as pure a cappella rehearsals. To this day, all band members are singing at the live concerts. In recent years, the band consisting of Eeti Nieminen, Heikki Tuhkanen, Ekow Alabi Savage, Lauri Kallio and Jimi Tenor has already played numerous club and festival gigs together, but had not yet released an album.
