Kaj Backlund

Harry Kaj Olof Backlund (February 24, 1945 – December 25, 2013) was a Finnish jazz trumpeter, composer, arranger, bandleader, theorist and one of the founders of the Helsinki Pop & Jazz Conservatory and the Jazz Department of Sibelius Academy. He was also one of the founding members of UMO Jazz Orchestra. He was a contemporary music education pioneer in Finland and a long-running senior music theory teacher in Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences.

Kaj Backlund started playing trumpet at the age of seven in a youth brass band, led by his father, at the Church of Paavali in Helsinki. At 14-years of age he founded his first big band. Later Backlund had to take a day job as an assistant accountant, but was able to participate to the workshops held in Jyväskylä in 1966 and 1967, where George Russell was teaching. He started to get work opportunities as a session musician from YLE Radio Dance Orchestra and UMO Jazz Orchestra. In the beginning of the 1970s Backlund started to arrange Toivo Kärki's songs. Backlund was founding the Oulunkylä Pop & Jazz school (later Helsinki Pop & Jazz Conservatory) and planning the first curriculum of the Sibelius Academy Jazz Department.

Kaj Backlund's sons Jari, Jukka and Tapio are all musicians.

Selected Discography

As composer and arranger:

• Pori Big Band: Pori Big Band (1974)
• UMO: Our Latin Friends (1976)
• Studio Big Band: No Comments – Finnish Big Band Jazz (1977)
• Kulttis Workshop: Kulttis Workshop (1988)
• Various Artists: Julkaisemattomat vol. 8 (2001)

As a trumpeter:

• Thad Jones, Mel Lewis and UMO (1977) (Nominated for a 1979 Grammy award in the "Best Jazz Instrumental Performance - Big Band" category.)
• Eero Koivistoinen: Wahoo! (1973)
• Edward Vesala: Nan Madol (1974)
• Heikki Sarmanto: Everything Is It (1972)

Bibliography

• Improvisointi Pop/Jazz-musiikissa. Helsinki: Musiikki Fazer 1983. ISBN 951-757-108-9