Iiro Rantala - My Working Class Hero (CD)

Release Date: 08/28/15With genius, wit and touching passages, Iiro Rantala opens new doors to John Lennons universe.A homage to John Lennon. In this tribute, Rantala turns to the musician who is perhaps greatest of all of his ‘lost heroes’. “I heard John Lennon before I knew anything about jazz” says Rantala, “’Happy Xmas, War Is Over’ was my first encounter with his music when I sang it in the school choir at a Christmas concert. Even then, it took my breath away. How is it, I wondered, that this guy can write something quite so simple and yet so powerful?” That same combination of simplicity and strength is perhaps also the greatest attribute of Rantala himself. Throughout the whole album, what may well sound effortless is in fact the result of a long and exacting process by which Rantala has worked scrupulously on transforming the original material. The task they have given themselves has been to take world-famous songs, simple works of genius such as “Imagine”,