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Heikki KoskinenHeikki "Mike" Koskinen is a recording artist, composer, and educator currently living in San Francisco. Chosen in "Rytmi" magazine critics polls as Finland’s top jazz trumpet player in the 1970’s, he left his native Finland to study jazz at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Heikki’s music career began in Finland with playing American Soul music as well as free improvised jazz, with musicians such as Edward Vesala, Juhani Aaltonen, and Heikki Sarmanto. Heikki is the recipient of several Finnish composing grants, recorded several albums, and won awards as an innovative children’s music teacher. His 1980’s Bay Area bands, with Heikki on trumpet, featured such musicians as Hadley Caliman, Steve Heckman, Mark Levine, Joe Bonner, Bennie Green, Larry Hancock and Michael Spiro. Lately Heikki has re-connected with his free improvising musical roots, especially with Bay Area sax player Rent Romus and the Finnish “Kellari (Cellar) Trio”, featuring reed player Mikko Innanen and bassist Teppo Hauta-aho. Heikki’s main instruments these days are piano, the Morrison Digital Trumpet as well as tenor recorder. Besides performing and composing, he teaches music in the Bay Area. For ten years he was coordinator and host of the local radio program, "Studio Finland" and he has been a key musical figure in the Bay Area Finnish community for several years.
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