Recapitulation of Spring 2014

Spring 2014 has been absolutely the most crazy and amazing spring so far in my composer career. Well, already if you consider that I have written 104 blog posts about what happened from the end of February until the beginning of June (so approximately during three month time), I guess that gives you some kind of picture HOW much has been going on… But in case you don’t have time to read all 104 blog posts, I will summarize last spring in one post, partly for my own sake.

So in January I broke up after four years in a relationship, which contributed to my decision to apply for masters in Sweden. I also participated in Vocal Espoo’s choral composition competition.

In February I got to know that both I and also our composer association Tampering had been given grants by the Finnish cultural trust foundation, which was great news!

In February my piece “Expressionen” was performed in Helsinki to a enthusiastic audience.

In March I travelled Tampere-Helsinki-Stockholm-Malmö-Copenhagen-Gothenburg-Stockholm-Helsinki-Tampere for entrance exams at three universities in Sweden (and one day sightseeing in Copenhagen), and got full points in the entrance exam at Malmö.

On the 14th of March I also made my Canadian début with my piece Loco for solo viola, which according to my friend, Canadian composer Paolo Griffin, wasreceived with standing ovations.

In the middle of March I also started writing this blog, A Composers Diary!

In the end of March I both produced and played my own piece Piano Delirium in the “Korvat Auki Tampere” concert in Pietiläsali, in the main library Metso in Tampere.

In April the music theatre production Buss Number 13 including 5 of my pieces, had three performances (and one pre-premiere) at the Tampere Hall, and the last performance was part of the contemporary music festival Tampere Biennale 2014. More over my pieces got a great review in the local newspaper Aamulehti.

In April I also participated in a conducting course, in which I conducted the orchestrated version of my own song cycle Dagbok, and the piece was premiered at the final concert of the course.

In the rest of April I worked as a producer for my own concert. I put together an orchestra, handed out 800 flyers in front of the Tampere Hall, contacted the radio station and two newspapers (which all three made interviews with me about the up coming concert, which was great for getting audience!) and led many of the rehearsals.

Suomen Työväen Musiikkiliitto offered me a publishing contract for my choral piece Kielikurssi for children's’ choir this spring and it will come out next winter!

On the 14th of May I had myfirst composers recital, with over 200 people in the audience and a good review in the daily newspaper Aamulehti. It included premieres of my choral works Visheten and Min Gud.

Moreover in May my piano solo piece Psychedelic was premiered at the composers concert in Tampere and my solo viola piece Loco was performed at the RRR!! Festival in Helsinki.


In addition to all above named I also have written my thesis and defended it, AND written a 10 minute piece for symphony orchestra (while sleeping 2 night on the floor of my school) and have passed my final exams for becoming a composer.

Finally my choral works El jardín de las morenas and Credo have been premiered at the VocalEspoo choral festival, have been awarded third and joint second prize and have been broadcast by the National Finnish Radio Company Yle.

I think I can call it a day. Or a spring, that is to say.

A little bit of this and that…

Thursday the 22nd of May 2014. This week has been filled with a little bit of this and that and a lot of composing. On Monday I applied (of course on the deadline day) for the comprovisation course at the contemporary music festival Time of Music in Viitasaari (Finland). The rest of the day I only used for composing my orchestra piece “Unborn” which has to be finished by the end of this month.

Tuesday morning I wrote a small test for my thesis (to prove I’m the actual author), then voted in the EU elections, composed the whole day and took quite a late train back to Helsinki.

On Wednesday I had to go to the “sailors doctor” for a regular check-up for getting the “sailors health certificate” so that I can work on board for the next two years. You have to book the time to the sailors doctor about two to three month ahead, and you can’t work on a ship without having a valid certificate, so that’s why I had to do it this week although I’m supper busy with graduating right now…

After the check up I took directly a train back to Tampere and headed for my one of my last composition lessons with my teacher Hannu Pohjannoro. It was quite a depressing and stressful lesson. First of all, he told me the deadline for my composition “exam” (returning all the pieces that will be evaluated as my exam), is next Tuesday the 27th of May, so in 6 days time.

I have been working on (=planning in my head) my orchestral piece “Unborn” for about 3 years now. It is basically going to be a string ostinato (= patterns that stay the same throughout the piece) with a dialogue between woodwinds and brass on top of the ostinato. This dialogue I have begun to write about three times so far and on my lesson I had only about 4 minutes dialogue written out of 12 minutes music planned. Not only did I notice my teachers undertone that he didn’t believe I would ever be able to get the piece ready by the deadline, but I also noticed that he didn’t seem to be sure if the material I had would be enough to fill a 12 minute piece.

Well, after this depressing encounter I went home and dropped of my bags, ate, and headed to listen to my friend Annuska Hannula’s final exam concert in theatre music at Kulttuuriravintola Kivi, and she did absolutely great. I tried to leave a bit early, because more or less at the same time it was the final exam concert of my singer friend Tiitus Ylipää, in which the piece “The Voice” by my friend Matilda Seppälä’s was premiered. I ran all the way from Annuska’s concert to Tiitus’ concert, but by the time I arrived I could hear the final applause, so sadly I heard nothing of that concert.

Eero Kiukkonen, Annuska Hannula and Vera Veiskola 21.5.2014.
© Cecilia Damström

The whole Thursday I spent writing, about 4 or 5  hours in the day and the same amount at night again. In between I went and listened to the “Young soloist concert”, where many of my friends (like trombonist Roosa Lampela, violinist Riikka Alakärppä, percussionists Henri Sakki and Ville Koppanen and pianist Lotta Penttilä) got to play one movement or a short piece as the soloist of the Tampere Philharmonic! The audience in the Tampere Hall consisted this night mainly of friends and relatives of the soloists so the ambience was really great; warm and encouraging.

After this I headed to the composition studio where I spent the next 7 hours (until 4 AM) writing my orchestra piece “Unborn”.  And as crazy as it might sound; I began a fourth and final time from the beginning with writing the dialogue between woodwinds and brass! Yep, quite crazy to do that 6 days before the deadline, but I agreed with my teacher and felt like my material wasn’t quite good enough for making a 12 min piece.

Rehearsals and an Important Call

Yesterday we had a second rehearsal with my quintet “Flying high” for my upcoming concert 14th of May. In the evening I went and listened to the chamber choir Näsin Ääni rehears my music as well. But it was so strange, the choir was yesterday evening very different compared to what it is like normaly, somehow it seemed to be harder than usual for the choir to keep in tune and other weird stuff like that. But maybe the “long break” (as they didn’t rehears last Wednesday, because it was Vappu eve) was present in yesterday’s rehearsal.

The chamber choir Näsin Ääni
practising for my concert.
© Cecilia Damström

The chamber choir Näsin Ääni
practising for my concert.
© Cecilia Damström 

The chamber choir Näsin Ääni
practising for my concert.
© Cecilia Damström

The chamber choir Näsin Ääni conducted by Markus Yli-Jokipii,
practising for my concert. © Cecilia Damström

Today I had piano class with my teacher Risto Kyrö and after my class Harri Hautala, the main music critique from the local paper Aamulehti called me and asked if I could come for an interview tomorrow! I’m so excited! Hopefully the interview will help to get a larger audience to my concert, which would be really nice! (The concert is for free, so I don’t hope to get more money, I just hope people will come and listen to my great music and maybe my music will touch someone, that’s all I’m asking for!)

In the afternoon I had my piano student and the rest of the evening I was working on my thesis, because I should be handing in a preliminary version to my teacher tomorrow and the deadline is on Friday the 9th of May!

Oh yes I got an other nice email: I was also accepted for masters in composition at the University of Gothenburg as well! Now I’m considering which option to go with, but at the moment Malmö still feels a bit closer to my heart, simply due to intuition and how at home I felt in the city.  Some cities simply immediately feel like home and others just never will feel like a place for you and I know that very well by now, so I think I will trust my intuition.

Accepted for Masters at Malmö!

I got an email: I WAS ACCEPTED FOR MASTERS AT MALMÖ SCHOOL OF MUSIC!!! YAAAAY!!! I have accepted the place but I’m not 100% sure yet what I will do next autumn, so I will first wait for the results from the other schools (Gothenburg, Helsinki and Berlin) before I make any definite decisions… But the fact that Malmö has FIVE different ORCHESTRAS that play the pieces of their students is simply so incredible that it makes Malmö the most attractive alternative at the moment… And also the fact that I liked the school immediately and loved the city! I think intuition is something that shouldn’t be underestimated! So happy!

Clicking online for accepting my place at Malmö School of Music!

Regular Day

Monday the 14th of April.  Yesterday I had a wonderful free day! Slept until 1PM and went to the evening mass and quite early to bed.

Today I have had a regular day. Finally filled in the online application for Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin, and noticed that I should have sent in a signed version of the application by tomorrow! I was horrified, after all I had gone through on Friday, and I feared it maybe all was in vain! But I called the secretary in Berlin and she was nice and said she could print out the online application I had filled in and add it to my other papers, so nice of her!

The whole afternoon and evening I used for making midi tracks of my works “Visheten” and “Han som du älskar finns inte mer” for the choir Näsin Ääni so that the choir members can practise it at home as well. It took me much longer time than I thought (because I make separate tracks for every voice, so that makes 8 seperate tracks + 1 track with all voices for Visheten and 5+1 tracks for the other song, all together 15 tracks).

By the evening I was feeling quite desperate because I have both piano class and conducting class tomorrow, and I hadn’t had time to prepare any of them and it was already 23.30. I was considering of texting my piano teacher and saying I can’t come tomorrow, but I decided to focus, and instead of giving up started practising piano, then practised conducting for a while and at 3 in the morning I was already much happier with my self and went home! It may sound strange, but I’m very happy I’m not in a relationship (anymore), and can practise with a good conscience piano until 3 in the morning without having to “call home” and telling anyone “I’m alright”. It feels so good to be 100% free!

Applying for Masters at Hanns Eisler in Berlin

Friday the 11th of April. Yesterday night it crossed mind that if I want to apply to Hanns Eisler for masters, and the application has to be in Berlin by Tuesday the 15th of April, it means I have to send it of by express post TODAY! So I called my mother last night and asked if she had already translated my CV into German, which she said she hadn’t yet but promised to do it before today.

I had quickly just looked at the application before and just seen that you need a CV, copies of your degree and high school graduate certificate. But it made me a bit suspicious that they didn’t ask for any compositions, so I called the Hanns Eisler student information, and found out that I not only have to send in several scores, but also a recording of the pieces on CD and a commentary of every work in German!

So off to school I was for collecting a new transcript of records from our school secretary Outi Oksanen (a wonderful woman who can help you with almost anything concerning your studies in music at TAMK!) and to start writing analyses on my pieces in German. For getting the package on time to Berlin I should hand it in to the post before 17 o’clock. My mother had university 10-16 o’clock, so that meant I couldn’t let her read through my texts before sending them off. I am a bit nervous about that, but luckily my German is quite good, so I’m not too concerned.

When I was going to start printing out everything at about 16 o’clock I noticed I didn’t have any money left on my printing card! I ran to the office, hoping that there would be some one still at work so that I would be able to charg my printing card but nope, alone I was. All worried and depressed I happened to meet my friend, guitar student Sauli Palmujoki in the stairs and he was so nice that he said I could print all the documents and sheet music with his printing card! So I printed out my German CV, all my German commentaries, my pieces Loco, Expressionen, Die Berge and Dagbok and a CD cover.

Next issue: burning a CD with these pieces of music. My computer has at the moment a really stupid problem; it won’t play a single sound. (I once opened the scoring programme Sibelius at the same time as the recording programme GarageBand was open, and somehow they managed together to get my output completely mixed up, so now my computer makes no sounds, except when I am talking to someone on Skype! So weird! And I know only one way of fixing the problem;  re-booting the computer, but I haven’t got time for that at the moment!) Anyway, because the output doesn’t work, ITunes won’t open on my computer! And I usually burn my CDs on ITunes. So I tried burning it with Apples own software, but it didn’t work. (It made it into a computer cd, not into a audio cd.) Then I tried transferring all songs with a memory stick to our school PC and burning a cd on it, but same problem, it turned out to be a computer disc, and moreover the PC didn’t play mp4 files! I had already given up and was almost leaving the school without a CD, when I remembered that we also have Macs in an other computer room, and there ITunes worked perfectly well and I could finally burn a CD with my music!

Well, at this point, when all my material was ready and I finally made it to the post, it was already almost 18 o’clock. I asked the woman in the post if there was any possibility to get my package to Berlin so that it for sure would arrive on Tuesday the 15th of April. She said that by express it would take 2-3 work days, so she couldn’t promise it would arrive on time. I asked if there wasn’t ANY way of getting it there on time and she said “well, we have this extra-quick-express package, and it will arrive within two days, but it costs 40 euros. Moreover, because the post of today has gone off already about an hour ago, you have to bring it your self to the post centre in Multisilta before 20 o’clock. But first you have to pay everything here.” Left with no other option, I had to accept this offer. So I paid altogether 41 euros for the package. Then I asked her if she could show me where the post centre is (on a map), because my “smartphone” is all messed up (as well) and the internet doesn’t work. So she fetched the telephone directory and showed me where to go, about 10km from Tampere city centre, in the middle of no where.

When I came out from the post office I called my mum for getting to know which buses go there. (I don’t even have a driving license and I’m a terrible biker… After five minor accidents by bike (once a car drove into me, but nothing serious happened, thank God!) I prefer to walk or take buses!) So my mum was nice and told me to take bus 26, and I asked the bus driver to tell me when to get of. The bus of course only went every 30 mins, so I waited for about 15 minutes in the rain for the next bus.

So, I got of the bus, in the middle of no where and started walking along this long road, where there were no people in sight, and only big lorries drove past me, every time  squirting water about two meters in all directions, threatening to soak me.  I hadn’t had time to eat anything else than breakfast the whole day (a banana and an apple) so I was absolutely starving and it was raining and I had no umbrella. For a moment I almost felt like crying, knowing I still had to walk for about 1 km in the rain, and because I knew I was missing the biggest concert of Tampere Biennale, which started at 19 o’clock with Tampere Philharmonic at the Tampere Hall… But then I just thought of how absurd the situation was, me all hungry in the rain in the middle of nowhere on a Friday evening looking for a post office without having a clue where to go, so I started laughing instead.

I finally reached the end of the road, where there was an absolutely enormous building. There was something that looked like an entrance, so I went to the door, but it was locked. And no doorbell in sight. Then I spotted a small sign glued on to a post box near by saying “Urgent mail this way” and a arrow into a yard with a small parking place. In that yard I only saw a really small door, which looked like if it was only meant for staff, because there was a small ladder leading to it. So I didn’t dare climb the small ladder for testing the door. So I started walking around the corner of the house, thinking there might be an other door further on. But after having checked the several hundred meter long wall around a corner, which only contained two small doors with a sign “no entrance” I decided to head back.

So then I was left with only one option: climbing the small ladder and testing the small door with the red light, which looked like a staff door. And it was open! And there was a man inside, who looked very surprised at the sight of me. So I asked if this the place to leave urgent mail, and yes, it was finally the right place! So I handed in my package at 19.30, just in time, 30 min before the place closed!

Now I chose to take a shortcut back through the forest to the bus stop. And once again I had to wait for 20 minutes for the bus in the pouring rain. But I was proud I had made it and at least you can’t say I didn’t make an effort! I decided to try to make it to the second half of the Philharmonic concert as well, and I did make it! But I will write a separate blog post about the rest of the evening. This was the story of how I applied to Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin.

KMH and home

Friday the 14th of March. Today was the last day of entrance exams, the interview for KMH in Stockholm. We were about 10 people who were invited for the entrance exams, and I heard they have about 2 places. I was not so worried about the interview today, as it is my last option of all my options in Sweden, and the other exams (in other cities) have gone quite well anyway… During the entrance exams I met Jesper Nielsen, Ole and Kerstin studying in Piteå, Bára Gísladóttir from Iceland and of course Oliver Bowers, whom I met the other day.

Today my good friend and former flatmate Mari Pakarinen also arrived for a day, to take part in the entrance exams for a masters in trumpet at KMH. Her exams went well and she was quite pleased with how it went. Afterwards we had a very nice afternoon in Stockholm together.

Interview for CoPeCo

Wednesday March 12th. Today I had the interview for the international master program Contemporary Performance and Composition (CoPeCo). The master program is a joint up masters, so if you get in you study one semester (6 month) in Tallinn (Eesti muusika- ja teatriakadeemia), one semester in Stockholm (at KMH), one semester in Lyon (The Lyon CNSMD) and a last semester in Hamburg (at Hochschule für Musik und Theater).

I was very excited about the program to begin with, until I found their curriculum. But then I noticed that the curriculum was filled with electronics (and improvisation), so I have been less keen on the programme lately (especially as Malmö was such a nice school, but it’s only my second option).

So in the interview I was quite frank with them and told them that I have done a lot of programming but I’m not so in to it. And they were quite frank with me and told me that my ambition to write an opera for a masters project wasn’t very suitable for this program. So I felt a bit like if two people would have met who come really well along with each other, but the one openly sais he wants to be in a relationship/or get married and the other person doesn’t want a relationship/marriage.

In the interview I first had to do some improvisation. I was a bit surprised, I hadn’t read about it. So they asked me how I would like to improvise and I of course said “with piano”. And it actually went much better that I had expected it to go! In the interview we discussed my opera idea and how it could be suited for the masters program. I also spoke about my pieces Loco (for solo viola) and Expressionen (suite of miniatures for clarinet, cello and accordion). They also asked me if I would be prepared for the moving around Europe part on which I answered “I think that’s one of the best parts about the whole programme!”.  So now I just have to let fate decide what to do, if I get in or don’t get in to CoPeCo.

The Royal College of Music in Stockholm (KMH)

Tuesday March 11th. So yesterday and today I have had exams for The Royal College of Music in Stockholm. The exams were 4 hours both days and tomorrow I have my interview for the international CoPeCo programme and on Friday the interview for the normal masters programme at KMH. At the moment the school looks like absolutely nothing, because they have torn away the main building recently and are at the moment constructing a new building at the same place. So everything around the few buildings that are left is construction area.

Yesterday we hade a four hour test in counterpoint. We were all given an own room with a piano and desk, and we got five tasks; harmonic analysis, a Generalbass task, a task in modal counterpoint, to write the first sequence of a three or four voiced fugue (two themes were given to elect from), and a compositional task that you had to continue from a given bar (two different options were given to chose from here as well). I felt the time wasn’t enough for me and I had a really hard time with the imitative modal counterpoint task. But considering how little I have done similar tasks I was quite pleased.

Today I had a four-hour instrumentation test. I liked this test more than yesterdays one, maybe because I feel practising instrumentation is more useful than writing fugues or modal counterpoint, but this is just my opinion. We had again own rooms with a piano and desk and this time four tasks for the four hours: a general task where the range of different instruments where asked and writing out the sounding result of different transposing instruments, putting out articulation marks and bows on a solo piece (and choosing an instrument for the piece), reducing a orchestra score for piano and of course an orchestration task in which you could chose one piano piece out of three options (Brahms, Ravel or Schönberg). I actually was surprised my self how difficult I found the first range questions, but have to defend my self by the argument that I don’t usually write stuff for the lowest or highest notes of for instance wind instruments, because they don’t sound very good. Doing the partichelli also was much slower than I had expected, and with these first two tasks I spent two whole hours without noticing! But I only had time to make the first two bars of the partichelli… Then I began orchestrating Ravel, but also for that I hardly had any time. They had given us two whole pages of a Ravels piano piece, but I orchestrated the first 1,5 rows of the first page and then the first 2 rows of the second page. I chose to do a bit of both so that I could show a bit different types of orchestration. For the task with articulation I had hardly any time at all.

After the test I met an other boy who also is applying to the same programmes as I am, Oliver Bowers is his name. He is grown up in Sweden but he has a similar multicultural family background like me and he is at the moment living with his girlfriend (a violinist) in Estonia. He has done his bachelor in composition at Gothenburg University, so it was nice talking to him. He told me they have a great team spirit among the composers in Gothenburg and that he liked that especially much. They have a own “composition corridor” with computers for the composers. He also told me that one of the main professors, Ming Tsao whom I met last Saturday, only teaches about once a month in Gothenburg because he normally lives in Berlin. Oliver also told me a funny (and curious) fact that all composers at Gothenburg university except one are vegetarians! Fancy that!

University of Gothenburg - Academy of Music and Drama

Saturday the 8^th of March, international woman’s day. This morning I also googled up the Academy of Music and Drama, and noticed that they also had a contemporary music festival named “Sirenfestivalen” which began today! The first concert started at 3PM, but luckily I was early, because there was an unofficial “meet the composers” happening before the concert which apparently had begun at 2 PM, but at least I heard the last 20 minutes of it.

The concert was organized by the society “Levande musik”, which seems to work a bit similar to the Finnish organisation “Korvat Auki-Open Ears”, except that it is not national and only is active in Gothenburg. In the concert five composers, three of them master students at Gothenburg Academy and the other two were graduates from the Academy, were played by professionals, by the trio Tchirkov-Josel-Veale. The peculiar trio Tchirkov-Josel-Veale consists of: the oboe, played by Peter Veale (from New Zeland but now working in Germany), the guitarist Seth Josel (from New York, now living in Berlin) and the accordion player Sergej Tchirkov (from St.Petersburg and still working mainly in Russia). A few of the pieces in the concert were conducted by Gunno Palmquist.

The program was:

Sebastian Ingvarsson (1989): The House is Black

Max Wainwright (1987): Six States

Axel Rudebeck (1978): Tyngd, lätthet, lätthet

Adam Skogvard (1980): Komposition nr.8

Esaias Järnegard (1983): Y

Because the opinion (at least my one) about music is formed by in which context you hear it, I always find it very hard to say anything about things I only have heard once. But what most strongly stayed in my mind was Max Wainwrights piece. He told me that he usually only writes for electronics and rarely for instruments nowadays, so this sounded like an electronic experiment of gliding sinus waves but on real instruments. At one point the oboist took out his mouthpiece from the oboe, took out a second mouthpiece and began blowing both the double reeds simultaneously. With the air pressure he managed to get rising and sinking sounds and effects while the accordion the whole time played a high accord almost in the same pitch. (Max told me he had originally planned it the other way, that the accordion was supposed to bend while the oboe stayed on one note, but it didn’t work at all so the musicians tried and suggested this solution, which sounded very similar to Max original idea.)

I happened to sit beside the man who had lead the discussion before the concert so I asked him if he happened to be the teacher at the Academy. And right I was, it was professor Ming Tsao. I introduced my self and told him that I’m a Finnish composer and he at once replied, “Yes I know, I just read your application the other day and we were all very impressed with it”. I asked Tsao if it would be possible for me to write an opera as a masters project, which he said should be fine. He said it is also possible to chose other projects, such as writing for the Stockholm Symphonic Wind Orchestra, for other orchestras etc, but that if I would want to have a whole opera performed it would be possible if I would look for my own musicians etc with help of the teachers. Tsao also introduced me to the professor of electronics Palle Dahlstedt.

Moreover I talked to the students Max Wainwright (who knew many of my Finnish composer friends once again through UNM) and Kajsa Magnarsson (who knew my composer friend Dante Thelestam from a summer course in Lithuania).

There are about 3-4 composition students in every year, and about 40% of them are women (although this concert happened to be very man dominated even though it was the international women’s day). The building of the Academy is very nice and has a friendly but pompous (in an artistic way) feeling about it. It actually reminds me a lot about Waldorf schools, because it had as good as no 90° angles, a lot of natural materials such as wood and stone and had big windows and with a lot of light coming in, and the building was located beside a green park. Funny to imagine that this might be my university next year…. Or Malmö, or Tallinn or Helsinki or Berlin!

Malmö Academy of Music

It is Wednesday the 5th of March. I am applying to Malmö Academy of Music for a master degree in composition and today was the first part of the entrance exam. It began with a group summoning at 9AM, where after we all were direct to an own room, with a piano in it. We had a total time of 8h to accomplish three written tasks. We were interrupted for 15 min for making an aural test (in contemporary analysis, this time we got to listen to Lutoslawski), but otherwise I sat in my room the whole day (with exception for when I went to buy more green tea).

I have to say I really enjoyed the test! I began with the third task, orchestration. It was scored for piano, but we were supposed to re-score it for 8-11 players. Then I did the free counterpoint task, which I enjoyed even more! There was one bar written ready for piano in three voices and about 12 empty bars, which I filled up with a four-voices quasi fugue. Last I did the first task, analysis, which I liked the least. I always find it hard to write texts containing self-evident things on paper, but as time was ending I forced my self to write two pages about the contemporary string quartet. I am very happy with how the exam went, but really exhausted after having to concentrate for 8 hours (after having slept for about 5h every night three nights in a row). But tomorrow there is only the interview, so I’m looking forward to that!

Grant applications

On February 28th there was once again a deadline for a grant application. There were at least two different trusts to apply from on this day, Greta & William Lehtinen trust, and Svenska Folkskolans vänner. I decided to apply only from Svenska Folkskolans vänner, because then I can write the application in Swedish, which is much easier for me than writing in Finnish. (I went to a Swedish school, speak German and English at home, so even though I live in Finland, Finnish is my fourth language.)

I applied for 3.000 euros for my self for this summer (July and August) so that I can work full time with my up-coming cello sonata “Borrelia” commissioned by the cellist Lukas Stasevskij. I also applied for our composer society Tampering, for organizing a choir concert with new choral music in Swedish, so let’s keep our fingers crossed!