Eight songs for a Mad King

Wednesday June 4th. Today is a historical day; The piece Eight songs for a mad king by Peter Maxwell Davies will be performed in Finland for the first time since 1991. I came with two friends all the way from Tampere to Helsinki for seeing this! (Okay my friends also had other appointments in Helsinki, but I didn’t!) The performance was at Metropolia University of Applied Sciences and the main part was sung by the counter tenor David Hackston. The performance was absolutely fantastic, and I absolutely love this piece of music! If you don’t know it, please watch it from the youtube video below.

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.

Biennale day 2 (Bus Number 13, Pretty Intense, Kairos I)

Thursday April 10th. A free morning and noon! So I had for once time to sleep enough, do all my dishes (which have been waiting for about 10 days…) and clean up my room! Because tonight two friends from Helsinki, composer students Lauri Supponen and Niilo Tarnanen will be staying at my place, so it was about time to get my room in some kind of order!

My free-pass to the festival. ©C.Damström

At 17.00 it was time for the third and last performance of Bus Number 13 in the Studio of Tampere Hall, this time part of the Tampere Biennale festival programme. Musically this performance wasn’t the best (at least in my pieces there were very many mistakes, like for instance in one of the songs that was supposed to be in three voices (harmony) the middle voice got lost, so partly it was only in fifths instead of major chords, which does sound very different from the original idea…). But both the director Auvo Vihro as well as one of our compsition teachers Jouni Kaipainen said this anyway was the best performance because it was the most intense and coherent. The audience was great and laughed and applauded loudly their content. (This is something that happens quite rarely in Finland, especially in concerts of classical or contemporary music, maybe mainly because Finns generally are quite shy and don’t show their emotions very much.)

Bus Number 13 at Tampere Biennale ©Maarit Kytöharju

My song "Erottelua" ©Maarit Kytöharju

My song "Anglisms" with Tiitus Ylipää "driving" the bus number 13.
©Maarit Kytöharju

My song "Word classes".
©Maarit Kytöharju

All of the musicians and composers in Bus number 13. From the left:
Jarkko Pajunen, Pauli Marttinen, me, Saara Lehtonen, Eero Kokkonen, Andreas Heino,
Roope Mäenpää, Antti Kerosuo, Alina Lehti, Meerika Ahqvist, Tiitus Ylipää,
Heidi-Annina Nikkilä and Anni Härkönen.
Photo ©Maarit Kytöharju

After the great show all people who had been on stage were really tired. Because it was the last show we had to pack everything away, all lights and microphones and cables and chairs etc.

At 19.00 it was time for the next festival concert, Pretty Intense (Tiukahkoa settiä) in the small concert venue of Tampere Hall. This was a chamber music concert by Uusinta Ensemble. The concert was accompanied by a light “show”, which consisted mainly soft changing colours of light on the walls.

The programme was:

Klaus Wiede: Oh, These Disgusting, Lovely Lovers (first performance in Finland)


Antti Auvinen: Kaarea (2006 / 2007)


Jarkko Hartikainen: magnetic (2011 / 2013)


Kimmo Kuokkala: Ocra (2005 – 2007)


Antonin Servière: Kumahdukset (first performance, commissioned by the Tampere Biennale) (2014).

Duration approximately 75 min, no intermission.

Jukka Iisakkila, conductor


Malla Vivolin – flute, Markus Kaarto – clarinet, Lauri Kilpinen – trombone, Väinö Jalkanen – piano, Antti Suoranta – percussion, Maria Puusaari – violin, Teija Kivinen – violin, Max Savikangas – viola, Markus Hohti – violoncello

Uusinta Ensemble ©Maarit Kytöharju

Uusinta Ensemble ©Maarit Kytöharju

I have to say, this concert actually was pretty intense, and I had at this point a terrible head-ache so unfortunately I can only conclude that I enjoyed the concert although I wasn’t able to absorb very much.

At 21.00 it was time for the last concert of the day, Kairos I – Discipline and  Fantasy at the small but cosy Student Theatre on Itsenäisyydenkatu. This concert concentrated once again on Biennales theme of the year: combining visual arts with music. So after Haapamäkis String Quartet, we were presented four silent films to which the Kairos Quartet (from Berlin) improvised.

The Kairos Quartet ©Maarit Kytöharju

The Kairos Quartet ©Maarit Kytöharju

The Kairos Quartet ©Maarit Kytöharju

The programme was:

Kairos Quartett (DE)

Sampo Haapamäki: Connection (2007)

Silent films by Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp (improvisation)

Films: Le retour à la raison; Emak bakia; Anemic Cinema; L’étoile de mer © Kuvasto. Duration approximately 70 min, no intermission.

The Student Theatre was completely full, every single place was occupied and extra chairs had to be brought in. When the quartet accompanied the films they didn’t only use their instruments in every thinkable way, they also used other things for making noises, such as for instance an old fashioned car horn and rubber toy pigs (which made a grunting noise). One of the sounds I liked especially much was when the violin moves its bow in slow circles over the strings with a lot of pressure, which produces a kind of grinding sound.

The Kairos Quartet improvising to a silent film.
 ©Maarit Kytöharju

After the concert most of the festival attendees moved on to pub Soho. (This pub had been chosen because their kitchen is open late.) I happened to sit beside the producer of Tampere Biennale, Minnakaisa Kuivalainen and we had a long chat about concert and festival arrangements and how the festival had gone so far. It was very soothing to hear that it always seems to be a lot of last minute arrangements in every festival, however professional it is arranged.

The fun thing about festivals is that you not only get to make new friends but also get to meet old friends which you otherwise see very rarely. Tonight for insance I got to meet my friend, pianist Väinö Jalkanen whom I last saw almost 2 years ago while I was studying in Berlin for the summer. Väinö, who plays in Uusinta Ensmble and had performed earlier this evening, studies at the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin, but is this year an exchange student at the Liszt Academy of Budapest. Having been an exchange student my self (at the Conservatory of Valencia) it is always fun to hear all the anecdotes of friends about what it’s like getting accustomed to new traditions and bureaucracy.

When the bar closed (at 2.30) we were (for once) sensible enough to go straight home with my guests Niilo and Lauri for getting some sleep. But what a great second day at Tampere Biennale it has been!

Regular Busy Tuesday

Tuesday the 8th of of April. A regular busy day. Began at 9 AM with a piano lesson with my teacher Risto Kyrö. Then I headed for the composition studio for doing some more re-scoring of my choir composition Min Gud, re-writing it from woman’s choir to mixed choir. Well, for that I used more or less most of my day.

In the afternoon I went to the organic (food) store Ruohonjuuri, because they have a 10% discount for students on Tuesdays, so I always make sure to go there on a Tuesday, especially when buying expensive things like Aloe Vera juice (20 euros a bottle).

In the evening was again a performance of the musical theatre Bus Number 13 at Tampere Hall, which I went and watched. I ended the evening with a bit more re-scoring in the composition studio.

Tiitus Ylipää, Antti Kerosuo, Alina Lehti and in the middle Meerika Ahqvist.
My piece "Erottelua" in Bus Number 13. © C. Damström

My piece "Anglismeja" in Bus Number 13. © C. Damström

Tiitus Ylipää in Bus Number 13.
© C. Damström

Alina Lehti and Meerika Ahqvist
in my piece "Sonetti" in Bus Number 13.
© C. Damström

Antti Kerosuo, Tiitus Ylipää, Meerika Ahlqvist and Alina Lehti
in Matilda Seppäläs piece "Huudahduksia" in Bus Number 13.
© C. Damström

Premiere of Bus Number 13

Still Saturday the 5th of April. Tonight was finally the premiere of the musical theatre show “Bus number 13” at Tampere Hall! As always I arrived in the very last minute, because I was at the conducting course on the other side of Tampere until 18.30, but made it just on time anyway, as always!

I came to think of that I haven’t written what the show is about! Well, I will tell you: It’s about everything and nothing. It’s a bit like a theme with variations. So that means, there is a very simple main story that then is told in very many different ways and from different perspectives. The text is called “Exercises in Style” and is written by the Frenchman Raymond Quineau. We of course used the Finnish translation by Pentti Salmenranta, and a very good translation it is! The story is very simple: “When I got on the bus this morning there was a young man with a long throat and a ugly hat on the bus. He started shouting at a gentleman that he was on purpose stepping on his feet every time the bus stoped. The gentleman didn’t react so the young man went embarrassed to the back of the bus and sat down on a free seat. A few hours later I happened to see this same young man in front of the railway station. He was accompanied by a friend, who recommended him to lift up the highest button on his jacket.” So this story is told in many different ways.

I had chosen to compose five different versions of it. Vapaa mitta that means “Free measure” was a short poem (with free measures as the name says). I made it into a duo between a solo alto singer and a baryton saxophone. Erottelua means “Separation” and was quite a long text explaining first in one phrase how things are, then in the next phrase how things are NOT. But in the end the director made the piece into a wet dream… The director interpretation worked really well and was very funny but good! Anglismeja means “Anglicisms” and was basically Finnish with very many English words put in between. (I chose this text because that is the way I speak sometimes when I’m tired, haha!) Sonetti  was quite a long poem in “Sonnet” measure which I chose to make into a “Shostakovich” influenced parody. Last (but not least) I did Puheen osat which could be translated “Parts of speech”. I did it into a 3 voiced choir song. For seing pictures of the show go to my older blog post “Pre-Premiere of Bus Number 13” or here.

The premiere went really well as well! My mother and father had driven up from Helsinki (200 km) for seeing the show tonight as well as tomorrow’s premiere of Dagbok, and I was very happy they came! Also my German friend Natalja Pfeifer from church, who doesn’t really speak Finnish, came anyway to the show and enjoyed it!

Pouring up the sparkling wine.
Premiere of Bus number 13 on the 5.4.2014. ©C.Damström

Our clarinetist Andreas Heino, violin player Heidi-Annina Nikkilä and singer Meerika Ahqvist.
Premiere of Bus number 13 on the 5.4.2014. ©C.Damström

Premiere of Bus number 13 on the 5.4.2014. ©C.Damström

Composer Matti Carter, singers Alina Lehti and Meerika Ahqvist and
composer Matilda Seppälä
Premiere of Bus number 13 on the 5.4.2014. ©C.Damström

After the premiere we had a Premiere-shindig right there where we were in the Studio of Tampere Hall and it was really fun! Because we had such a low budjet for the party we had just ordered lots of pizza. Luckily there was also some Indian take away for us vegans! The director Auvo Vihro and the instructing teacher Hannu Pohjannoro held nice thank you speeches, and so did also I and a few others. I thanked the musicans and singers for their open-minded and positive approach to new music and for putting their souls into our music. I also thanked Vihro for the great directing, without nothing would have worked, and I thanked Pohjannoro for organizing something like this and giving us student such a great opportunity!

Premiere of Bus number 13 on the 5.4.2014. ©C.Damström

Instructing teacher Hannu Pohjannoro.
Premiere of Bus number 13 on the 5.4.2014. ©C.Damström

Director Auvo Vihro
Premiere of Bus number 13 on the 5.4.2014. ©C.Damström

Pianist Jasper Koekoek and cellist Anni Härkönen.
Premiere of Bus number 13 on the 5.4.2014. ©C.Damström

Contrabassist and composer Roope Mäenpää.
Premiere of Bus number 13 on the 5.4.2014. ©C.Damström

We had quite a lot of pizza...
Premiere of Bus number 13 on the 5.4.2014. ©C.Damström

We were given roses!
Premiere of Bus number 13 on the 5.4.2014. ©C.Damström

At around 12 AM we left the building because the guard wanted to go home. Many people went home, but a few of us continued to the club Ruma. For some reason most of us who didn’t go home at this point had had a bit too much of the sparking wine at the premiere-shindig, so we didn’t stay long. For once in my life I was sensible enough and noticed it was time to go home although it only was 2 AM… 

Pre-Premiere of Bus Number 13

Friday the 4th of April. Today I took a day off, so I slept long and woke up at 13 o’clock! (But yes, I did go to bed yesterday at about 5 AM after finishing the parts for Dagbok…) I am quite exhausted, so I actually did nothing the whole afternoon (except eat lunch).

At  19.00 the musical theatre show Bus number 13, including five of my compositions, had it’s pre-premiere. It went really well and I’m so proud to be part of such a great production! The director Auvo Vihro has done a GREAT job! I had my camera with me so I photographed the whole show (have over 600 pictures!), beneath you can see some of the best ones.

Antti Kerosuo singing Pauli Marttinens "Puhekieltä".
Bus number 13 pre-premiere 4.4.14 ©Cecilia Damström

Tiitus Ylipää, Antti Kerosuo and Alina Lehti
in Tero Lanus "Onomatopoeettisuus".
Bus number 13 pre-premiere 4.4.14 ©Cecilia Damström

Tiitus Ylipää and Alina Lehti
in Pauli Marttinens "Alexandriini".
Bus number 13 pre-premiere 4.4.14 ©Cecilia Damström

Bus number 13 pre-premiere 4.4.14 ©Cecilia Damström

Bus number 13 pre-premiere 4.4.14 ©Cecilia Damström

Bus number 13 pre-premiere 4.4.14 ©Cecilia Damström

From my song "Anglismeja" with Tiitu Ylipää, Antti Kerosuo and Meerika Ahqvist.
Bus number 13 pre-premiere 4.4.14 ©Cecilia Damström

From my song "Vapaa-mitta" with Andreas Heino and Alina Lehti.
Bus number 13 pre-premiere 4.4.14 ©Cecilia Damström

From my song "Sonetti" with Alina Lehti, Meerika Ahqvist and Antti Kerosuo.
Bus number 13 pre-premiere 4.4.14 ©Cecilia Damström

All four singers! In Roope Mäenpääs "Oodi".
Bus number 13 pre-premiere 4.4.14 ©Cecilia Damström

From my song "Anglismeja" in a easy busride with bus number 13.
Bus number 13 pre-premiere 4.4.14 ©Cecilia Damström

Meerika Ahqvist in my song "Erottelua".
Bus number 13 pre-premiere 4.4.14 ©Cecilia Damström

Things getting a bit hot in my song "Erottelua"...
Bus number 13 pre-premiere 4.4.14 ©Cecilia Damström

Meerika Ahqvist in my song "Erottelua" with Tiitus Ylipää and Alina Lehti at her sides.
Bus number 13 pre-premiere 4.4.14 ©Cecilia Damström

More photos can be found here.

After the show everybody was in a hurry to get home. I called Matilda who didn’t come to the pre-premiere, because she has had a flu since Monday… So I visited her and we drank tee and I showed her the photos and before we knew it, three hours had past and it was 00.30 o’clock and time to go home. I’m quite excited about the premiere tomorrow!

Stockholm Town Theatre: Det kan du drömma om Hilda

Wednesday the 12th of March. Today I went and looked at a theatre play with my friend Niklas von Lüders (actor, studied at Calle Flygare Teaterskola). It was about a 29-year old Hilda who works as a psychiatric nurse and takes care of her old mother (who always complains about everything Hilda does). Hildas best friend is the slightly older Kathryn, who just is getting divorced and likes date sites and alcohol. The play was much about criticism of our mental health care system, but  mainly it was very funny and comic.

In a interview with the director Sissela Kyle, she sais that she thinks the author Chris Lee has written a funny, absurd and humanistic play, that she feels tells a story about the enormous loneliness. All people in the play are terribly lonesome and are not able to do anything about their situation. Everyone except Hilda and her friend Katheryin, who have each other. Their friendship is unsentimental and quite tuff but deep and real.

The play was very amusing and had many good points about how we nowadays prefer to pump people full with medicines instead of listening and actually trying to help people. But the story was slightly slow and for me the direction was a bit unclear and sometimes I felt that quite unnecessary things were put in, which only slowed down the tempo of the play. But I had many good laughs and could recognize many people in the play, so I think it was worth watching.

Faust och Faustin and out

Friday March 7th. One of the greatest privileges of knowing five languages is that I can see theatre in many countries (and read literature in many languages). So this evening I went to Gothenburg State Theatre with my friend Elias Liebendörfer and watched “Faust och Faustin and out”, a 3,5 hour version of Goethe’s Faust.

The play gave me quite mixed feelings. It was visually well done and the actors were technically very good. But only one actor out of 11,  “Gretchen” played by Caroline Söderström, touched me emotionally with her interpretation. The other actors left me quite indifferent, although the topics were grave. Moreover, I didn’t quite understand what the play wanted to say. It felt like they were trying to rub something in your face, but I never quite got what and why they were rubbing that something into my face and what the actual point was.

But what I DID like was that they took up the factor of how perverse Faust was who wanted Gretchen and how wrong he did her. I remember when we read Faust in high school at the age of 17 I was absolutely disgusted by this story about an disgusting old man who uses his power to get an innocent and naïve 14 year old girl, murders her brother and get’s her to by mistake kill her own mother and then runs of and abandons her pregnant, and lets her sit in prison instead of him. And then in the end everything is anyway forgiven and he comes into heaven without having suffered anything else than mental anguish, that jerk! But my teacher said “oh, you don’t understand this well enough”. Well, at least the director of this play had understood it more or less the way I had, because the first hour of the play was only about incest and a staging of something that reminded about the case of Josef Fritzl, who locked up his daughter in his cellar for 24 years. The scene emphasised how sick and wrong the relationship is between a paedophile and his victim, who has no choice and starts to identify it self through her/his abuser. Now THIS is something that has to do with Faust! (The paper Svenska Dagblandet says in their review that they think this play is like an anti text to Goethe, where the victims are finally aloud to speak out. For me, this was always what Faust was about.)

But about the play I can say as a conclusion; I am happy I had read Faust before, otherwise I wouldn’t have understood anything. (I actually even composed Gretchen’s song for high school, and had completely forgotten about it but remembered it when I noticed that I knew Gretchen’s lines by heart through my own music.) I am also happy that I went and looked at the play, it was interesting seeing the staging and interpretation. But I was disappointed in the result, especially by the actors, because I was expecting the actors at the State Theatre of Gothenburg to be fantastic, not empty puppets reading up lines with good emotional imitations, which just felt unreal.