UJ Pesonen plays a variety of instruments, including drums, violin and guitar. He loves listening to music in the vinyl medium and his band, Wrong Kata Trio. The group has recently issued the album Come Morning.
“I am UJ Pesonen. I play in the Wrong Kata Trio which is based in Lawrence but I live here in Wichita.
We’re afraid to call it jazz because a true jazz fan who would come to see us would be disappointed. We’re not honoring that legacy, really. But we all love old Miles Davis and we draw, hopefully, from that same sort of creativity. Somebody described us as Pink Floyd meet Medeski, Martin, and Wood. I thought, ‘That’s pretty good.’ I don’t have a name for that genre but that’s kind of where we are.
My parents were quite a bit older. Dad was a symphony conductor, Mom was an opera singer. There was nothing but classical music at home. When I got into my teens my friends led me astray into rock ‘n’ roll. Up to that point all I’d listened to is classical.
It’s so refreshing when I do engineering all day to come home and sit at the drums or pick up a guitar and I’m instantly transported completely away from the engineering mindset.”
