Biennale Day 1 (Grand Opening and Dialogues)

Wednesday the 9th of April. At 19.00 the opening ceremony of the contemporary music festival Tampere Biennale began. This year it was located in Gallery Himmelblau, in the Finlayson area. It is one of the most amazing galleries I know, because the river running through Tampere  (Tammerkoski ) is right outside the large windows of this gallery, only about a meter or two beneath the windowsill. (Two years ago on the 12th of April my piece “Flying High” was performed in this very same gallery in Tampere Biennale 2012.)

Everybody was handed a glass of wine and as tradition is the artistic director of the festival Olli Virtaperko kept an opening speech, followed by a speech by a representative of one of the main sponsors.

The audience at the opening of Tampere Biennale 2014 © Maarit Kytöharju

The theme for this year’s Tampere Biennale is visual arts and video together with music.  For the opening there were three commissioned works of video together with three musical works that had been commissioned by Tampere Biennale in 2012.

The opening of Tampere Biennale 2014
© Maarit Kytöharju

The programme was:

Elina Brotherus: Counter fleurette (2014) 13’

Music by Harri Vuori:  Conter fleurette (2012)

Pirjetta Brander: Mielen tasapainolajit (2014) 6’

Music by Maija Hynninen: Mielen tasapainolajit (2012)

Tuuli Susiaho: Lummelampi (2011) 14’

Music by Olli Virtaperko:  Kuru (2009)

The composers and artist of tonight at the opening of
Tampere Biennale 2014 © Maarit Kytöharju

After the videos had been presented people were free to move around in the gallery. In the second and larger room of Himmelblau, the Printmaking Studio, there was an electroacoustic interactive plant-theremin named Plantomime  that was made by Johannes Ylipää. So when you touched this plant it made a sound, and the sound varied depending on where and how you touched the plant! I had a lot of fun playing with the plant! When I softly tickled the leaf of the plant, it made a high squeaky noise, like a happy little animal. It was a really cute sound! The sound somehow reminded me very much of my rabbit Viljo… I was very impressed by the programming part I must say! Ylipää had created so many extremely cleaver patches with Max MSP, it was very impressive.

Johannes Ylipääs Plantomime. © C.Damström

The Max MSP patch Ylipää has created.
© C.Damström

The midi-piano used for the plant to work with. © C.Damström

Johannes Ylipää explaining how the plant works.
© C.Damström

After the opening and a glass of wine it was time to head on to the next concert Dialogues. Luckily the concert was in the Finlayson church, located very close by the Gallery Himmelblau. This concert was only guitar music, either solo or duo, played by guitarist Ismo Eskelinen and Jarmo Julkunen, who played not only an acoustic steel-stringed guitar but also all guitar related instruments such as Renaissance guitar, Baroque guitar and ukulele.

The programme was:
Sampsa Ertamo: Constructed improvisations (2013, first performance) 8’

Adrian Le Roy: from the Second Livre de Guitarre improvisations (1556) 6’

Jukka Tiensuu: Drang (1998) 8’

Gaspar Sanz: Canarios (1674) 5’

Sebastian Fagerlund: Kromos (2011) 8’

Trad./ Jarmo Julkunen: Pontikka (2002) 8’

Sami Klemola: re (2014, first performance, commissioned by the Tampere Biennale) 10’

The audience was before the concert asked not to clap between the pieces, but at the end of the concert instead, which suited the programme. My favourite piece in this concert was Klemolas piece re. He was testing very interesting glissandos and other sounds. Klemola usually makes a lot of music for electroacoustics, and I felt I could hear that aesthetic in this non-electronic piece as well, and that was one of the most interesting things about the piece I think.

After the concert many composers headed out for drinks, but I headed back to the composition studio. I have to make midi-demos of my pieces for the members of the choir Näsin Ääni, who are going to sing my pieces in my up-coming composition concert on the 14.5. The soundcard on my computer has now stopped working, there comes absolutely no sound out of my Mac anymore, so that is one of the reasons why I’m so much more depending on the composition studio nowadays. So I worked from 23 to 2 o’clock and then headed home for a good night’s rest.

Textural Piano Music

Wednesday the 9th of April. Today in the piano seminar the subject was textural music within piano music. I recommend to listen to all of the following composers (if you don’t know them already), for widening your own perspective of music.

Morton Feldman

Feldman is known for that his music is very quiet and that very small changes  happen within the music. He usually also uses only very few notes. Feldman is supposed to have said “I look for things I like and which I want to hear over and over again”. Today we listened to the piece Triadic melodies.

György Ligeti

The Hungarian composer Ligeti wasn’t a pianist (according to him self at least), but his Etudes for piano are very popular (in terms of contemporary music). Every etude bases on a pianistic idea and an rhythmical idea. The basic idea in many of Ligeti’s etudes is that he has two different rhythmical loops of different length, so slowly they grow more and more apart. What I found especially interesting was etude number three, where a few notes are hit silently, and then you play more or less only a cromatic scale, but of course the silently pushed keys don’t sound, so the rhythm turns out to sound quite complicated. What a cool idea!

Steve Reich

We looked at the work Piano phase for two pianos (or two marimbas). Although the piece only is two pages long, it lasts for about 20 minutes! The basic idea is very simple, although it is very hard to fulfil: the one pianist stays in tempo the whole time while the second pianist is supposed to do a very very slight accelerando so that he/she at a certain point is a sixteenth note ahead. As I said, very easy to understand but very hard to play.

Usko Meriläinen

This Finnish composer from Tampere didn’t compose with rows but instead thought of music in the same way as the painter Wassily Kandinsky thought of art: it consists of dots, lines and surfaces. He wanted to free himself from the abstract 12-tone music and therefore came up with this system. This is of course a thought that can be applied to most music at the end, and it is said that even Meriläinen grew tired of people the whole time trying to find “dots, lines and surfaces” in his music for the rest of his life, because he also developed new compositional techniques after having composed his Second Sonata for piano with this technique. In the seminar also the Fourth Sonata for piano was warmly recommended, especially the recording by Jaana Kärkkäinen.

Juhani Nuorvala

Former teacher at Tampere University of Applied Sciences (and now teacher at the Sibelius Academy) wrote in 1989 Five Bagatelles for piano which studies of overtones. This piece plays with the timbre of the piano, without that you have to go climbing inside the piano nor having to prepare the piano.

Philippe Manoury

This French composer wrote a Toccata for piano that is based on repetition. Also this piece of music plays with the timbre of the piano in a similar “simple” way as Nuorvala.

Roger Reynolds

This American composer, teaching at the University of California, San Diego, writes  extremely complex music. I have personally never heard any of his music performed, but my teachers told us that he at one time was performed rather frequently also in Finland at a time when he was “in”.

Beat Furrer

The Austrian composer and conductor of Swiss birth is nowadays teaching at Graz University of Music and Dramatic Arts. Here you can listen to his Phasma for solo piano.

Score Reading and Emails

Wednesday April 9th. This morning began with one of my last score reading classes.

Score reading means that I get a score of an orchestra or chamber music piece and am supposed to be able to play it on the piano. The hard part is not only that there are a lot of different instruments and that I have to try to read them all at once (which is hard enough with my slight dyslexia). More over we are supposed to be able to read all different clefs  (such as alto clef for viola and tenor clef for cello), and all different transposing instruments, which can transpose into almost any key. (Note for non-musicians: By transposing instrument is meant an instrument like for instance trumpet in Bb, which means that when there stands a C in the trumpet score, it sounds as Bb, so every note in the score sounds a whole tone lower, which means you have to the whole time play it one tone lower than what is written. Some other instrument, like for instance clarinet in Eb, you have to transpose the line the whole time a small third up. Now imagine how it feels when you have a score with Clarinet in Eb, an other clarinet in A, French Horn in F, violins, violas (with a different clef), cello and contra bass (which in it’s turn transposes an octave up) and you are supposed to read what is going on in all these voices at the same time!). Everybody keeps saying “oh, it’s not that hard for you, you are a pianist anyway!” but I have to say; this has nothing with pianism to do. My friend Matilda is a violinist, and I have to say that we are more or less as good (or bad) in score reading anyway. Score reading isn’t a very common subject, only composers and conductors have to study it. (Although I heard it’s not compulsory anymore for conductor students at the Sibelius Academy, which surprises me very much!)

Anyway, so this morning I came an hour earlier to the classroom and was given a 4 page extract from Wagner’s opera Tristan and Isolde. But I have to say, although Wagner has a lot of transposing instruments (and also rare ones like horns in Db) I really like Wagner when it comes to score reading! It’s quite funny how it sounds like nothing while I’m transposing something wrong and you have no idea what should be going on in the music, but at once when I get all notes exactly into place, it sound absolutely fantastic! That is the best reward ever!

After my 30 minute score reading class I had lunch and was writing emails the whole rest of the afternoon until a seminar about contemporary piano music began at 16.15. There is SO MUCH to take care of as I have my own composition concert coming up on the 14.5! I have to find altogether 30 musicians for performing my pieces, a sound technician, a concert hostess, a light man, plan rehearsal schedules which are supposed to suit all people and many more things… So this afternoon I once again used 3 hours only for email for planning one concert. Getting a bit worried about the amount of work the upcoming festival of new music “TampeRinging” 20-24.8 will be, which I will be arranging together with Henri Sokka and Matilda Seppälä and other Tampering members.

Anyway, at 16.15 it was time for a seminar about all kind of experimental piano music, after that quickly home to change clothes before the opening of the already nationally established new music festival Tampere Biennale 2014.

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

Recording with the Church Choir

Monday the 7th of April. Tonight was the recording session of our Catholic church-choir. We are making a CD with all the English songs we usually sing at mass, and the profit we make with the CD will be given to the church. I had prayed that the session would go well, but I have to say; it was quite a disaster, but that makes one more funny story to tell!

So, for once I have been feeling quite well for a longer time, but of course today, on the day of the recording, I wake up with a sore throat and slight fever. And when I come to church I see that also Natalja, our strongest voice in the choir has a thick scarf around her throat and is feeling sick. (She told me it happens every year; she is never ill during the year, except the week she has a choir concert! How ironic!)

Members of the Catholic Church Choir of Tampere Parish.  © Cecilia Damström

Joao Alferes was doing the recording for us. (For free! So nice of him!) Unfortunately he hadn’t known that the piano we would use had a midi-output, so he didn’t have a midi cable with him. So I called the music technologist Petrus Tuisku and asked if he had any ideas, and he suggested I’d ask the porter of the conservatory. So I walked back to Tampere conservatory (luckily the Catholic church and the conservatory are located really close to each other), found the porter Mikko who was so nice and helped me find a midi cable that I could borrow.

Joao ready for recording the choir. © Cecilia Damström

By the time I arrived back in church the headphones weren’t working anymore. And they were of course headphones which needed a 6.35mm plug in (not the 3.5mm plug in which for instance computers mp3 players have), so the quickest solution was that I went home and got my own headphones with the 6.35mm plug in. (Luckily I live close to church as well!)

Joao and Zita listening if you can hear the mistake we made or not.
© Cecilia Damström

Then we were finally ready to start recording. Except that the piano was doing something very weird. The midi signal that the piano was giving out was automatically transposed half a note lower than the sounding range. So when you played a C, the sound came out as B. So the choir was singing a long with the sound that came out of the pianos own loudspeakers (in C) but the midi-track on the computer was the whole time in B. Neither Joao nor I had ever seen something like this before! Well, luckily Joao found a way of transposing the midi-track up half a note also in the computer, so after much effort we were finally all (piano, guitar and singers) in the same key!

Happy members of the church choir. © Cecilia Damström

Happy members of the church choir. © Cecilia Damström

Because I was the only one singing a second voice (in almost every song) we had to make a peculiar positioning with me in front of the choir (so that my voice wouldn’t drown under the other 10 voices). In one song where we didn’t have piano but instead only guitar and song, we had to position the guitar in front of the choir.

Juan accompanying us on guitar. © Cecilia Damström

The recording session was more or less what I expected: long and tiresome but fun. When you have so many people doing one recording there are always so many potential things that can go wrong, and most of them happened to us: someone forgot the words, I started coughing in one song, the pianist made a mistake, the choir forgot to repeat the chorus… But the most peculiar mistake that happened a few times was the midi-piano mistake: occasionally the midi-piano just send out randomly a mess of different notes and made it almost sound like a short Webern passage in the middle of a song. These random “midi-glissandos” as we started calling them, happened at any occasion without warning. Sometimes they were followed up shortly by a new midi-glissando, sometimes we could play an hour or so without a midi-glissando, and we had no idea what to do about it. So every time the piano decided to protest with a midi-glissando, we had to take the whole song from the beginning.

Theresa growing tired. © Cecilia Damström

People were growing more and more tired, so the amounts of human mistakes were increasing throughout the evening. We had a break at around 21 and Grace had brought a lovely cake for all us. (But this lent I’m without sugar, so I didn’t have any.)

Amazing Grace © Cecilia Damström

Quite at the end of our recording session we sang Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. Well, it wasn’t quite Cohen’s version, because we only sang the verses that are suitable for church, so only three verses. In this song our pianist was feeling so unsure though so we decided finally I would play the piano. The choir had a really hard time keeping in tempo, so Joao also had to kind of conduct the choir while recording. I had a slight hard time with both playing the piano and at the same time singing (alone) the second voice. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately, as I don’t know about the end result) the piano was located quite far away from the singers microphones, so I think my second voice is hardly audible… But we will see.

Natalja and me.

At around midnight, after a six hour session, we were finally ready, packed and could leave the Parish hall! Yep yep, tomorrow I have my piano lesson at 9 AM, so good night!

Meeting up with the Music Technologist

Monday the 7th of April. I was really exhausted this morning after the weekend. (I still went to church after the concert yesterday, and after church we had choir practice until 21.30…) My calendar showed a free morning so I did nothing. Until Petrus Tuisku called me and I suddenly remembered we had agreed to have a meeting at 15.00 but I had forgotten to write it into my calendar! That’s how it goes if I don’t write something in m calendar, I forget it! Anyway, luckily Petrus had time o meet up 30 min later, so it wasn’t a problem.

Petrus Tuisku is studying music technology at Tampere Conservatory and he will be recording my upcoming composition concert on the 14th of May. So we met up for discussing what kind of music the concert will contain and how it will be recorded. I am so happy I got a music technologist to help me, because I will have two pieces for flute and electronics, and electronics always make me really nervous, because they NEVER work as they should. But I usually never know why, while music technology students figure it out within no time. So I’m very thankful Petrus agreed to help me with this concert. The recording will also be part of his studies (the students of music technology have to record a live concert), but it wouldn’t have had to be such a “complex” concert as mine is; flute and surround electronics, quintet, ensemble, solo song with an orchestra and choir. Well, at least he will get to use all his skills! We discussed what kinds of microphones are most suitable and how Petrus will be positioning them and other technical stuff. I’m so glad this concert will be recorded properly!

The Premiere of the Orchestrated Version of Dagbok

Sunday 6th of April 2014. Today at 15.00 it was finally time for the final concert of the conducting course organized by Pirkanmaan Pinna, including the premiere of the orchestrated version of my song cycle Dagbok.

I had invited a lot of friends, so I was very happy that many of them could come! In the audience were my parents (all the way from Helsinki), my sister’s boyfriend and his mother (who came from Jyväskylä), three friends from church, my photographer friend Arto Jalonen (who has taken all the photos in this blog post) and one of my best friends, composer Jonne Valtonen. There were of course also other people, so all together there were about 40 people in the audience.

I was a bit nervous about presenting my music (I didn’t like speaking in front of an audience, especially not in Finnish), but the speech went quite okay. (I didn’t forget the name of any of the other conductors nor the names of the different movements of my song cycle, so that’s sort of an achievement…!) The song cycle Dagbok was conducted by three conductors. The first song “Stanna” (Stay) was conducted by Tuomas Kettunen, the second and third songs Int’ ett ord” (Not a word) and “Kallare” (Colder) by Hannes Merisaari and the last two songs “Stigar” (Paths) and “Jag vill” (I want to) by me.

Me presenting my song cycle Dagbok to the audience
at the final concert of  Pirkanmaa Pinna's conducting course 6.4.2014.
Photo © Arto Jalonen

Me conducting and my sister Jacintha singing my song cycle Dagbok to the audience
at the final concert of  Pirkanmaa Pinna's conducting course 6.4.2014.
Photo © Arto Jalonen

All the conductor students and singers who took part
at the final concert of  Pirkanmaa Pinna's conducting course 6.4.2014.
Photo © Arto Jalonen

The first performance of the orchestrated version of Dagbok went really well! I’m very happy! My sister Jacintha, who was singing, said she felt it hadn’t been a good day for her and that she thought it didn’t go so very well for her on which I replied that I disagreed completely; her singing sounded wonderful! I still haven’t her the recording of the concert, but I’m very happy!

After the concert, in the feedback session, our teacher Tuomas Hannikainen congratulated me on the piece and said he thought it was an absolutely great piece! Also Tuomas Kettunen and Hannes Merisaari thanked me and said it was fun conducting my piece. So the composer inside of me is just purring as loud as ever and I have to say I’m very proud and happy today! What a great weekend it has been!

My sister Jacintha Damström and me 6.4.2014
after the first performance of my orchestrated version of my song cycle Dagbok.
Photo © Arto Jalonen