The year of 2013 and some bonus pictures

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Fishermen, musicians and magic moment-lovers, hello and welcome to 2014!

I hope this year will turn out to be the best year so far in history. Better than 2013…

To make it short, fishing-wise I have had a lot of bad luck last year. Here is a short explenation…

… It is late june in southern Sweden. To be more precise, it is two days after mid-summer, 2013, and I´m packing my rods, flies, stupid waders and so on. A little later, two friends and I are bouncing around on the secret hot spot a couple a kilometers from Gothenburg. It is sea trout dusk and the night is about to come. Temperature: still around 22 degrees.

Two hours later, the water is totally packed with trout. It´s absolutely crazy and I have never seen anything like this before. Good sized trout are rising for small ridiculous worms in the surface. The water is literally speaking boiling.

I know that I have the right fly and that the water is exploding of worms, so the tactic is basically just to cast on the same fish until it takes. Casting, casting, casting… One trout is way bigger than the other fish, steadily rising on the same spot about 25 meters from the shore. I make around 30 casts on the huge silver-mama.  It might actually be a papa…

Accidently I hook two trout around one kilo each and have a lot of takes from smaller fish as well. Still I try to avoid this and only go for the big mama. Cast number 40 is different. The fly lands basically on the trout and I start to retrieve the line. The fly is stuck! I make the strike and the water explodes. During half a minute the monster is running away with the fly line. Splock – goodbye! Fu.. !!

Same thing happens one more time that evening. Same thing happened every time I hooked a big fish during the whole summer. Except one fish that I actually caught: a cod. Thanks!

I´m totally serious when I say that every time I´ve hooked a 4 pounder or bigger last year, I lost it! Why? Nature is cruel!

After a while I started to get used to the feeling of slack-line after nice takes. Learned to love it. Such a fine feeling! I also developed a great ability to appreciate the sound of the fly landing behind me in the bush while I still could see a fat trout disappear in the clear water.

But now it is finally the year of 2014 and I expect to catch great numbers of huge trout and… no! I forgot; No jinxing!! The guys warned me but I did not listen. Now I do. No jinxing this year (then I will catch huge trout and so on… ). Ok, sorry! No jinxing!

To celebrate the new year, I choose to show nostalgic and beautiful photos from last years. Pictures that shows who we really are but also some nature shots. Among these photos I guarantee that you wont find any big fish from 2013 that I caught. They are still waiting to be caught! /Fredrik

 

JFF interview @ Fly Dreamers

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Our friends in Argentina have presented Jazz & Fly Fishing at their site Fly Dreamers. Håvard answered a bunch of tricky questions, a lot about film making and things around it. Check it out if you ever wondered:

What kind of camera system do you use when you go filming outdoors?

or How is the pre-production process? Do you think ideas, stories and particular sceneries or do you let stories emerge in each fishing trip?

You find the complete interview with lots of videos and pictures here.

FlyDreamers

Allbymyself

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Heavily inspired by Håvard’s allbymyself films I have finally got my solo piano recording done! It’s taken a lot of time and effort, and the feeling of holding an album in my hands feels almost unreal. It’s been a musical process I’ve never really been through before. I’ve basically never performed or recorded my own compositions solo. I wrote the music, practiced and recorded alone so I didn’t have band mates to judge what’s good music and what’s not. So the result is basically something I’ve distilled myself out of a mountain of tunes, ideas and improvisations.

The album Polarities was released in Finland just before Christmas and I had the honour to have the release concert at one of the main shows at We Jazz Festival in Helsinki. I had several nightmares before the gig: going on stage naked, not knowing what to play, being late and keeping the audience waiting, the piano breaking apart while I play etc. But I guess the allbymyself-in-front-of-600-people-concert turned out pretty ok after all.

The album will be internationally released in February and if you want to check it out, I’ll put a couple of tracks here. If you like it, you can browse to my webpage www.joonatoivanen.com and order a copy already. It will also be available at itunes etc later this spring.

We’re also picking up the mail pace and planning 2014 with Jazz & Fly Fishing. A lot of ideas, as usual. If everything goes as in the best of worlds, we will have a rehearsal/recording session this spring, followed by trout and arctic char fishing in May. Some gigs early summer and a fishing trip beyond all limits. Some gigging and touring and top notch fly fishing in Europe in August, and of course new videos and the long promised Season 2. Thanks for your patience by the way 🙂 Whatever happens, we will make new videos, new music, meet new people and have a good time. Hopefully catch some fish too. Stay tuned!

2014 will be EPIC!

2014 will be EPIC!

Juha Mieto

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Happy new year!
Cross country skiiing legend, Olympic gold medalist and Finnish parliament member Juha Mieto shares his views on Jazz & Fly Fishing with us:

PS! We´re working hard on some new videos at the moment. A 2013 allbymyself video and our Season 2 trailer is right around the corner. Stay tuned!

Later –

H.

Chile!

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Critical Mass

Critical Mass

Hi!

Just a short report and some pics from Santiago, Chile, where I played with Håvard Stubø Quartet last week. The tour was great fun, the food was good, the beer was refreshing, the music was happening, the audience was great. Everything was good. And there was no fishing at all.

Why? Because I just couldn´t make it happen. No time. For a fly fishing nut like myself, it really hurts to be that close to true world class fly fishing – in the middle of the nasty Nordic winter – and not be able to go fishing. I´ll be back!

Some shots from beautiful Santiago:

 

PS! Working on a video right now, hope to have it ready before Christmas. My well-filled camera bag getting stolen by a clever team of Chilean pickpockets was a minor setback for this little film (some seriously stupid tourist behaviour on my part), but my friend Arne lent me his camera now, so I should be able to get the last few shots done.

PPS! Some really exciting new videos coming after Christmas. More on this later.

 

H.

 

 

 

End-of-the-year-2013 SALE!

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Good news for all of you who still don’t have our DVD or CD. Order before January 1st and you’ll get 5 EUR off the price for either of the products! There’s still time to get them for Christmas, but order before the worst mail rush.

It’s very simple: you go to this page. Then choose the End of 2013 SALE from the scroll down menu. Follow the instructions for payment (paypal or credit card) and then just sit down and wait.

Limbo

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The Finger

The Finger

 Right now, the short arctic autumn is rapidly turning into winter. Which is a good thing, really: The last couple of weeks have been a kind a limbo – no fly fishing and no skiing, just grey, wet, cold and dark. Late autumn is always messy, even the travelling and touring feels muddy and cold.

Everything gets easier when the snow comes, covering everything in gorgeous whiteness. It kind of cleans up everything and always gives me a feeling of starting fresh.

I´ve just started working on a new video. It´s more or less a collage of this summer´s fishing, with a kind of connecting storyline. I haven´t quite figured out how to do it yet, but the idea is to make a video that gives a preview to the videos that come later this winter/spring, but still is a film of its own. Hopefully I can pull it off.

We also have a lot more videos coming up on the website in the next few months, including some more ambitious efforts. This video season is going to be really exciting. More on this later.

Finally, a few more stills from last summer (all photos by Arne Mobakken except the trout pic, which was taken by Fredrik):

 

Peace –

H.

 

 

Nominated!

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Gullkroken

Hi!

Just got word that my short film “It´s Hardly Ever Like That” is nominated for this year´s Gullkroken award in the “Best Film/Short Film” category.

I feel really proud and flattered to be nominated along such heavyweights as Lars Nilssen and André Brun, and hope to see as many of you as possible at the award show in Oslo on saturday 26th of October.

I will also be performing at the award show with The Maggots, an ad-hoc rock group of passionate fishermen/musicians, made up of rapper Diaz on vocals, Lars Lenth on guitar and vocals, Alexander Engebretsen on bass, Cato Bekkevold on drums and yours truly on guitar.

Good times!

And here´s the video again:

It´s Hardly Ever Like That from Jazz & Fly Fishing on Vimeo.

Out of the water

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After an exceptionally long fishing summer, with an early spring and warm autumn, the winter’s now just around the corner. How do I know? We are actually having mail conversations again, first time after the summer’s fishing. Discussions about upcoming film projects, fishing trips and tours.

I myself have been quite busy with my solo piano album launch. It was supposed to be released in early 2014 but the plans have changed to the earlier. I couldn’t say no to the opportunity to have an album release concert at a brand new jazz festival in Helsinki, We Jazz Festival, the 14th of December. I’m thrilled and honored  to share the stage with Timo Lassy, one of Finlands hottest jazz names, and the living legend Tomasz Stanko from Poland. I’m both excited and super nervous at the same time, this is truely new ground for me – I’ve never had a solo concert with my own music before. Anyway, the album’s soon in press and I promise to give you a taste!

People! Stay tuned for new videos, blog posts and music! Trout! Make sexy time and lots of baby trouts! We’ll be right back.

Here’s the jazz evergreen Autumn Leaves performed by Keith Jarrett Trio. Enjoy!