Katja Aili Maria Toivola was born October 27, 1975, in Helsinki, Finland. She discovered traditional jazz at a Helsinki festival in the early 1990s, picked up the trombone at a music camp, and later wrote her University of Helsinki master's thesis on the Rebirth Brass Band. Her first visit to New Orleans came in 1995; she has lived there since 2004, and has played with the Finnish band the Riverside Rascals since 1996.
Toivola's 'Montego Bounce' rocks steady with a Jamaican flair ... the perfect vehicle to show off her growing prowess on the trombone.
— Geraldine Wyckoff, OffBeat (via All About Jazz)Since 2006 she has played the legendary Preservation Hall — the first woman wind player to hold a regular chair there, most Friday nights. She also plays the bass drum, and works as a graphic designer and photographer. She is married to trumpeter Leroy Jones, her partner since 1997, and appeared in the second season of HBO's Treme.
Toivola leads her own bands on both sides of the Atlantic: the New Orleans Helsinki Connection and the Spirit of New Orleans, both founded in 2001. Their albums include Bogalusa Strut (2002), At Last (2004), Some of These Days (2006), Mahogany Hall Stomp (2009), and Paradise On Earth (2012), and she has toured Europe, Brazil, Australia, Fiji, and New Zealand.
