"During my year as composer in residence with the Norrbotten Big Band in 2017, I wrote eight compositions that strongly capture my voice as a composer while at the same time focusing from many angles – maybe some of them surprising – on this immensely adaptable jazz orchestra.
I decided to call the set Unpainted Portraits, my aim being to paint musical portraits of people and prospects past, present and future. Literature, and especially poetry, has always been a source of inspiration for me in my work, and many of my new portraits are dedicated to writers I admire: the early 20th-century English modernist Virginia Woolf, the Finnish visionary playwright Minna Canth, and the contemporary Sámi poetess Rauni Magga Lukkari now living in Tromsø, Norway. One of the pieces pays tribute and is dedicated to the Suffragettes campaigning for votes for women in early 20th-century England. Others make a respectful nod in the direction of the jazz tradition, and the listener may here detect echoes of some of my favourite jazz composers, such as Gil Evans, Charles Mingus and Maria Schneider." -Outi Tarkiainen