I first heard Alexi last summer when our bands shared the stage in a concert in Avignon, France last summer. I was immediately drawn into his performance. What struck me first was his sound on the instrument. He gets a clear tone out of the piano that makes you focus on what he's playing. His playing ‘cuts through’ the other instruments, demanding your attention, and never gets ambiguous or unclear. You can hear that, for example, in his solo on „Goodbye Little Godfather“. Even when he's playing only single-note melodies, they have an authority to them that draws you in as a listener.
That authority also comes about from Aleksi’s strong innate rhythmic sense. He's not just playing lines when he solos, but is really concerned with phrasing: On that same solo on 'Goodbye Little Godfather', you can hear sentences with a beginning and end, punctuated by rhythmic accents that pullon the drummer's great groove. Those sentences form paragraphs, and Aleksi has a strong compositional sense to his soloing as well, allowing his ideas to develop organically, taking his time, building a solo with patience. That kind of maturity in a musician is really more the exception than the rule, and it's always a real pleasure when you hear a player who's addressing several things at once - melodic phrasing, compositional storytelling, a strong rhythmic dynamic, and a concern for the sound of the instrument.
Alexi also has a strong voice in his compositions, which have a certain unity. On the opening track, „Tribu“, or „Noaidi“, you can hear a single voice compositionally. While many musicians since Coltrane have used modal elements in a lazy, over-simplified manner, Aleksi is using them in a unique way in his writing. His compositions are compelling, among other reasons, because he clearly has a strong inner sense of voice leading which informs his writing, which you can hear very well on the piano figure of „Tribu“.
The quartet that Alexi has is well matched. There are no weak links, and everyone has a strong identity as a player, but there's a nice collective feeling to the playing by everyone - no ego involved in the bad sense of the word. (Brad Mehldau)