Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Helsinki, Uusimaa, Finland
About 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. 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, which also included Paroni Paakkunainen, Teppo Hauta-aho, Eero Ojanen, Pekka Pöyry, and Juhani Aaltonen.
- Later, Backlund had to take a day job as an assistant accountant, but was able to participate in the Jyväskylä Arts Festival 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 helped found the Oulunkylä Pop & Jazz school (later Helsinki Pop & Jazz Conservatory) and planned the first curriculum of the Sibelius Academy Jazz Department. Kaj Backlund's sons Jari, Jukka, and Tapio are all musicians.
Read more at Wikipedia