We Jazz

Matti Nives launched We Jazz in 2009 as a club night in Helsinki with saxophonist Timo Lassy, spinning soul-jazz and vintage records until 4am for blissed-out party people in a scene where contemporary jazz was proving its relevance through local labels like Ricky-Tick Records. Born in 1980 and raised in Jyväskylä, Nives had discovered jazz through hip-hop samples from A Tribe Called Quest and Public Enemy, eventually becoming a self-taught DJ, journalist, and graphic designer operating on pure DIY principles. The club night evolved into the We Jazz Festival in 2013, initially conceived as consecutive Friday and Saturday events that organically expanded into a week-long celebration held each December across multiple Helsinki venues including Ääniwalli, Sävy, and Kaiku. The festival's success and Nives' growing network within the Finnish jazz scene led to the natural next step: We Jazz Records launched in September 2016 with Bowman Trio's self-titled album, recorded at the December 2015 festival. Nives designed the covers himself, produced most sessions, and established the label's philosophy of treating each record as a special work of art where sound and physical appearance received equal care.

The label quickly established its core roster from Helsinki's thriving jazz community, with drummer Teppo Mäkynen emerging as the quintessential We Jazz artist through his visionary projects including 3TM's "Form" (2017) and the genre-melding "Lake" (2019) paired with the ambient "Abyss." Mäkynen received carte blanche from Nives to record whatever he wanted, releasing three albums in a single year and demonstrating the label's commitment to artistic freedom over commercial calculations. The breakthrough international signing came with Swedish saxophonist Otis Sandsjö's "Y-Otis" (2018), described as "liquid jazz" that blended hip-hop and electronica influences while remaining both free and focused, bringing the formidable bassist Petter Eldh into the We Jazz orbit. Eldh's project Koma Saxo, featuring a unique three-saxophone front line with Jonas Kullhammar and Christian Lillinger on drums, debuted with "Petter Eldh Presents Koma Saxo" (2019) and quickly became a sensation on the European jazz scene. Other key releases included Jaska Lukkarinen Trio's "Origami" (2017), Olli Ahvenlahti's "Thinking, Whistling" (2017), and Mopo's "Mopocalypse" (2018), with the label releasing about a dozen meticulously crafted records annually while maintaining uncompromising production values.

The label continued releasing adventurous music during the pandemic years, with standout albums including Ville Herrala's audacious solo bass debut "Pu:" (2020), consisting of fourteen short improvised vignettes that demonstrated beauty in an inherently divisive format. Otis Sandsjö returned with "Y-Otis 2" (2020), while other releases showcased the label's range from avant-garde explorations to soul-jazz grooves, including Stanley Jason Zappa's "Muster Point" (2020) and Timo Lassy's "Trio" (2021). When the 2020 We Jazz Festival was cancelled due to COVID-19, Nives founded the Odysseus Festival in 2021 on the small island of Lonna, demonstrating the same creative problem-solving that characterized the label's approach. Jason Nazary's "Spring Collection" (2021) and Koma Saxo's live album (2021) continued expanding the catalog, while the festival resumed in late 2021 with its traditional venue-hopping format across Helsinki. Nives also opened We Jazz Records Shop after acquiring the 11,000-strong vinyl collection of departed Swiss music journalist Francis Montfort, subsequently adding further collections and documenting their previous owners in a series of articles that connected the label's archival passion with its forward-looking releases.

We Jazz has grown into a multifaceted operation encompassing label, festival, magazine, record shop, and radio show, all unified by Nives' vision of making cutting-edge music accessible on vinyl while maintaining the community spirit that started with those late-night club sessions. The label reached 127 releases by 2025, with recent highlights including Linda Fredriksson's "Juniper" (2022), Dan Nicholls' "Mattering And Meaning" (2022), Koma Saxo's "Post Koma" (2023), Enemy's "The Betrayal" (2023), and Cosmic Ear's "Traces" (2025). International artists like Brooklyn's Jonah Parzen-Johnson, Mike Reed, Darius Jones, and Amirtha Kidambi joined the roster alongside Finnish stalwarts, with the catalog maintaining its focus on avant-garde jazz (53% of releases) and contemporary jazz while embracing electronic crossovers and experimental approaches. The label's distinctive visual identity, designed by Nives, became as recognizable as its sonic aesthetic, with each cover telling its own story while relating to the larger catalog. Despite never generating massive returns, the label has become smarter about breaking even while refusing to compromise on quality, embodying Nives' belief that every project should be executed for the joy of it, creating a global conversation around Helsinki's jazz scene that has made We Jazz one of Europe's most influential contemporary jazz labels.