Finland: Women in Jazz

From Helsingin Sanomat:

Women have composed, played, and sung jazz over its entire history of a hundred years and more, and yet the gender of a musician may still make the headlines in Finland in 2010.

If the musician is a woman, that is. This was the case last week for a concert of the UMO Jazz Orchestra, with the theme ”Female Composers” - probably for the first time in the entire history of UMO (the letters stand for Uuden Musiikin Orkesteri, or ”New Music Orchestra”) since it was founded back in 1975.