Camila Nebbia & Jukka Kääriäinen (AR/FI)

Performing at Tampere Jazz Happening for the first time, guitarist Jukka Kääriäinen and tenor saxophonist Camila Nebbia have only played together once before, in November 2025 at Club Wakuum in Graz, Austria. Over the past two years, the two artists have played together on five occasions in various random line-ups: in Berlin and most recently last June in Helsinki with drummer Chris Corsano.

Although Kääriäinen (b. 1987) and Nebbia (b. 1987) were only introduced to each other by a mutual American friend some three years ago, they still have a lot in common. Both are focused on improvisation and experimental music. Both love to ‘play their hearts out’ and both have made sound art. And both have exerted their influence as curators, with Kääriäinen serving in the venerable experimental music club Suhina in Helsinki.

As a result, they have never had to discuss or consult on anything together. “Playing together felt utterly natural right off the bat, and the idea of doing something like this in the future stuck with me,” says Kääriäinen, who graduated with a degree in music education from Metropolia University of Applied Sciences in 2013. His thesis was a study of the interaction between a musician and a composer, titled Chickens Giving Birth to Bulls – Commissioning a Composition for Guitar and Live Electronics.

Kääriäinen has released a dozen of his own albums and two with other ensembles, including Sähkökitarakvartetti. Nebbia, who was born in Argentina, holds three different degrees and is living in Berlin at the moment. She has already recorded some thirty albums with different ensembles, but never once with a single guitarist or in any ensemble.

It may be that the Saturday evening performance at Telakka will finally ignite the desire to do so through organic improvisation, without any big plans. “For me, playing music by improvising is always a social and ritualistic event, a dialogue in which the audience is invited to join,” says Kärkkäinen.