Discovery: Kaisa’s Machine

A regular post! Imagine. Thoughts on a new favorite, Finnish bassist Kaisa Mäensivu.

Did you know there’s a thing called “Nordic jazz”?

It took shape from the 1970s on when the great label ECM Records had success with Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek. I haven’t listened widely, but I love ECM as a label, and I’m a certified fan of trumpet player and composer Mathias Eick (also from Norway). Eick’s 2021 album When We Leave is gorgeous, and I made sure to pick that one up in vinyl form. It’s not a particular sound, but Nordic jazz is associated with a pastoral quality, modal improvisation, acoustic arrangements that emphasize atmosphere, and yes, a certain wintry cool.

Lately I’ve been wrapped up in the music of Finnish double bass player and composer Kaisa Mäensivu, leader of a band she calls her Machine, thus the double entendre of her third album Moving Parts. It’s among my favorite releases of 2025. The band, assembled from great artists Kiasa’s met in her adopted home town of New York, includes the guitarist Max Light and pianist Eden Ladin. Drummer Joe Peri, whose credits include Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett’s Love For Sale album, is Kaisa’s husband and a fellow graduate of Manhattan School of Music. Rounding out the personnel on this album, I was excited to see Bay Area vibes player Sasha Berliner involved in Kaisa’s world, first with two songs on the 2023 album Taking Shape, now here for the whole seven tracks. Berliner’s a stellar musician I found out about through Instagram (thanks algorithm), and I’m proud owner of her albums Onyx and Azalea. (Your correspondent has just discovered by way of researching this piece that Berliner has a new one out (She never called!) called Fantôme, so I bought that too. It’s great!)

Growing up, Kaisa Mäensivu moved from piano to upright bass after seeing a woman play one on TV, and besides that, her bio notes that her attraction had to do with the instrument’s authority and its heavy rhythmic possibilities. That’s why I love it too. (I played upright bass for a time in my 20s and got a ton out of it in terms of understanding what propelled jazz.) Kaisa went hard core in her studies, first at the famous Sibelius Academy in Helsinki and then the Manhattan School where she got a Master’s Degree. There’s nothing super cerebral about her music though. Some critics have heard her as a negotiation between the serene minimalism of her Nordic roots with the thrum of the mega-city she now calls home.

I can hear that I suppose in the skittering groove she and her guy Peri bring to the opener “Tykytys,” which the Google tells me means pulsation in Finnish, which scans. Its skip-hop feel smooths out for Max Light’s elegant guitar solo. He’s in the zone of the guitarists I listen to a lot these days - Kurt Rosenwinkel, Wolfgang Muthspiel - so Kaisa’s made me a fan of him too. Next up, “Midnight Sun” is a stunner. After a light piano intro, Kaisa’s bass plays the song’s melody, and when she’s joined by Berliner’s vibes, the blend sounds like some crafty new instrument, fruit-sweet on top, rich and woody down low. The piano drives harder as vibes and guitar take their pass in unison. Then the solos begin, so there’s something strange yet comforting about the structure, and as a listening experience, it’s about as easy as slipping into a hot spring.

I think my favorite track is “Moon Waves,” which is bass forward from the beginning, and we really hear her tone quality here, as we do on her elegantly selective solo about three minutes in. Overall, it crescendos gradually while developing a particularly enjoyable tonality.

Nordic jazz has a thread of avant-garde, clashy musicianship, but this isn’t it. Kaisa’s Machine plays lush, tonal music with a relatable flow and lovely melodies that make listening to the improvisation relatable. Some jazz lovers will find this too polite and contemplative, but it just depends on what you’re looking for, right? For me, this falls in that large and appealing category of music that feels good in the background but gets more fascinating with close listening. Among my growing list of wonderful younger women in jazz - guitarist Molly Miller, drummer Sophia Goodman, drummer Allison Miller and the Artemis supergroup she’s part of - Kaisa Mäensivu is an artist to enjoy now and watch in the future. At a time when so much commercial music has so few moving parts, Kaisa’s tunes and her execution are full of them.