Thesis, Thesis and Thesis…

Friday the 9th of May.

Yesterday was quite an awful day. Got up early and started working on my thesis at 8 AM (after about 4 hours of sleep) and worked on it in one go until about 13 o’clock. Then I went for lunch at a student restaurant on the way to the city centre, got my ordered vegetable bag from Runsaudensarvi and went back home for working on my thesis from 16 o’clock until about 4 AM in one go once again. I wrote about 25 pages today (out of 60 so far)… But I should hand in my thesis TODAY.

After a refreshing 4h night I continued writing my thesis from 8-17 in one go, without even having lunch. After this I had lunch and headed of for a rehearsal of my chamber music piece “Landet som icke är” for my up coming concert 14.5. I’m conducting (or again mainly just being a metronome) this piece as well. Today we had a rehearsal with only the string players and the percussionist. I was surprised by the fact how difficult it was at times for a few musicians just to keep the tempo during large triplets, so we even practiced with a real metronome (or actually a smartphone metronome app) a few sections.

I was planning on handing out flyers after the Tampere Philharmonic concert but it was raining and I was very tired, so I decided not to go and stand in the rain and cold today and headed instead home and kind of finished of my thesis and sent it of at 2 AM to my supervisor and opponents. After that I started getting stressed about tomorrows orchestral rehearsal, which I am conducting this time, because my friend Tuomas Turriago (who will be conducting the piece in the concert 14.5) is occupied with accompanying the audition of a new violinist for the Tampere Philharmonic. So at 2 AM I continued practicing my conducting (and practicing changing bar meters) until I finally dared go to sleep.

Concert of the Tampere Composers

Wednesday May 7th. Today I had both a interview and a concert so I slept well and used the whole morning actually just for taking it easy and making my hair nice (curling it takes about 45 minutes….)

At about 12.30 I met up with Harri Hautala at the nice and cute café Amurin Helmi close to where I live. We had a nice chat and he recorded the whole interview. When the interview was done the photographer came and took a few photos, while Mr. Hautala already had to leave as he was in a hurry to the next place.

After the interview, that I think went pretty well, I had lunch at school. (In Finland the state supports student meals at certain lunch restaurants, so we pay only 2,60 euros for a full warm meal including salad, bread and a glass of milk and sometimes even coffee or tea.)

In the evening we had at 19.00 the Tampere composers concert at Pyynikki castle. Unfortunately there was at the same time a big concert in the main venue of the conservatory, but anyway, we had a good audience of about 40 people (which is quite a lot considering contemporary music).

Pyynikki castle. © Cecilia Damström

My friend and pianist Tuomas Salokangas premiered my piano solo piece “Psychedelic”. He played it really well, but unfortunately the piano in the Pyynikki castle isn’t that good, so the whole idea of hearing the rich overtones of the piano didn’t quite come out that well. But I was anyway happy with the performance and Tuomas has promised to record the piece with me later on a better piano. I will put the recording on my soundcloud once it is ready.

Tuomas Salokangas premiering Psycedelic.
© Cecilia Damström

My piano piece Psychedelic is very different from my other pieces, it is very minimalistic and I didn’t expect anyone in the crowd would like it much, especially as the piano today wasn’t that good at bringing out the point of the piece. But to my surprise many people came and thanked me for the piece and I was so amazed! Tuomas told me a friend had said that he had felt almost like a “ meditative and almost religious experience” while listening to this piece! I think that is very flattering!

Tuomas Salokangas premiering Psycedelic.
© Cecilia Damström

After the concert we as usual headed of to our stamping ground, bistro pub Tuulensuu, where we had reserved a table. I invited my friend Tuomas for a glass of nice beer and the legendary potato vedges,  and also had a portion my self accompanied by a glass of wine, all of course paid on my Master Card as my account is currently on -22 euros… But I’ll get some money next month to pay my MasterCard, so it’s okay.

Unfortunately I had to leave early (at around 22 o’clock) because I had to continue writing my thesis, as I was supposed to hand in the thesis to my supervising teacher tonight! Didn’t really happen though… Worked on it until 4 AM but still not close to ready!

Me and my friend Natalja.

The pianist Tuomas Salokangas. © C.Damström

The famous potato wedges at Tuulensuu.
© Cecilia Damström

Three glasses of wine at Tuulensuu. © C.Damström

Duo Musicare (Piia Rytkönen and Juuli Vaulasvirta) and composer Matti Carter.
© Cecilia Damström

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.

Ilari Laakso’s Goodbye Concert

Sunday 4th of May. I am really stressed about my thesis at this point, which should be handed on Friday. But I went to school today to meet up with the singer Piia Rytkönen who will be singing in my piece Flying high at my composition concert 14.5. I gave her the jouhikko (bowed lyre) that my friend Annika Fuhrmann very kindly has lent me and together we sat with Piia and figured out how the jouhikko should be played in the piece (while singing). I have not either every played jouhikko “properly”, but Annika showed me a good two years ago how it is played, when I was writing this piece (Flying high) for Tampere Biennale 2012.We didn’t rehears too long with Piia, because we both wanted to attend Ilari Laakso’s concert.

The concert was very nice and it included many nice pieces composed by Ilari Laakso, our former headmaster at the Conservatory of Tampere. All the money from the sold programmes went to charity and also in general there was a great atmosphere during the concert. I was looking forward to hearing Laakso’s song cycle, performed by our new lector in singing Ulla Raiskio, but unfortunately she was so ill she couldn’t sing nor come to the concert. So instead of the song cycle, Laakso’s children Anna Laakso (piano) and Joel Laakso (cello) performed a great duet.  Other performers were the string quartet “Uusi Helsinki –kvartetti” and many teacher from the Conservatory of Tampere. There was so much nostalgia in the air and at the end of the concert the whole audience gave standing ovations to our former headmaster who has worked very hard for the music life in Tampere and has managed to evolve it to a great level, for which we are all very grateful.

 After the great concert I went to church (evening mass in English) and spent the rest of the evening writing my thesis. Five days left on that front. And ten days left to my concert!

First Orchestral Rehearsal

Saturday the 3rd of May. Today has been a nice day once again. Had orchestra rehearsal in the morning with Tuomas Turriago conducting the orchestra I have put together for my song cycle and my dear sister Jacintha came from Helsinki for the rehearsal. Because all my musicians are doing this for free I at least had a good rehearsal coffee arranged: biscuits, coffee and tea and my friend Natalja from church had baked muffins for the rehearsal (simply because she is so nice) so I think the musicians (who all are super tired and stressed out at the moment because it is the end of the semester and everyone has exams coming up) were quite happy.

The afternoon I spend writing my thesis and in the evening I went with my friend Matilda to have dinner at a friends house at we had such a lovely evening all together.

Rehearsals and Thesis

Friday the 2nd of May. This day has once again been filled with so great events that I cannot describe how blessed I feel that I have the opportunity to be a composer, that I have so many friends who help me and that I am currently arranging my first own composition concert!

So the day began at 10 in the piano laboratory with a rehearsal together along with my pianist friend Tuomas Salokangas, who is going to premiere my piano etude “Psychedelic” next Wednesday at the composers’ concert. The piece is a 7 minute long study of the timbre and overtones of the piano, consisting only of two chords, c minor (tonic) and G major (dominant). Because it is such a long etude consisting of a lot of one-hand tremolos it is easily very tiring for the pianist and I was very anxious about how Tuomas was feeling about playing this piece. But he played it once through for me without difficulty and it sounded great! I expressed a few adjustments but that was about it.

 

Tuomas Salokangas playing my composition
Psychedelic for me. © Cecilia Damström

After this uplifting rehearsal I headed to the main building of the conservatory and on the way there I managed to call Harri Hautala, the main music critic of the biggest regional newspaper Aamulehti. I cheekily told him that I was organising my own composition concert including a choir, an orchestra and much more, all together over 60 musicians on stage and that this is the biggest musical event a pupil has ever organized alone so far at Tampere University of Applied Sciences. I added that the concert is for free and might interest the audience. He told me to email him directly to his personal email and he would get back to me in case he was interested. On one hand I was amazed by how bluntly brave I had been, but on the other hand I feel I did the right thing as it’s only a plus for the audience of Tampere to know about such a nice free concert!

After a quick lunch I headed off for the first rehearsal of my piece Flying high. Flying high was performed in Tampere Biennale 2012 but now all the musicians are new and we will only have three rehearsals before the concert, so I will be conducting. Or conducting isn’t quite appropriate word for what I’m doing; My main task is to be a metronome. The piece will, at my concert (14.5), be performed by my friends Piia Rytkönen (soprano and jouhikko), Jenni Halonen (flute), Heikki Pöyhönen (oboe), Andreas Heino (clarinet and bass clarinet) and Taina Raittila (cello). The rehearsal went really well for being a first rehearsal, so I was very happy about that!

After the rehearsal I had planned to listen to my trumpetist friend Mari Pakarinens’ final trumpet exam (B-exam) for bachelors. Unfortunately our rehearsal ended so late so I only heard the last piece through the door but it sounded great! She has advanced so much in the last three years, I’m so proud of my dear ex-flatmate! She obviously got full points, a 5/5 for her exam.

After spending some time on correcting the questionnaire for my thesis I met up with my friend from church Natalja Pfeifer and her parents, whom are visiting from Germany for a few days. Her father is a cantor and Natalja has been telling them on skype about all my concerts she has been attending. Natalja’s parents were very nice and her father gave me this amazing CD of contemporary cello pieces, which is great, as I am planning on writing my cello sonata this upcoming summer!

At home I started seriously stressing out about my thesis. As my thesis is a comparative study of the study plan in composition at three different universities I had to hand out a questionnaire to the three universities. I have already handed out the questionnaire to the pupils at the Conservatory of Valencia, and got back 10 answers, which is enough. But I still haven’t handed out the questionnaire to the Finnish universities and it struck me that I HAVE to send out the questionnaire by tomorrow if I want to have ANY chance of finishing my thesis by next week, Friday 9th of May!

So I called my dear friend Matilda, all desperate, at 12 AM and asked if she could correct my questionnaire in Finnish as soon as possible, and she replied “I’m at the composition studio, come here, I’ll do it at once.” What a saving angel! So on Friday eve at 00.30 I arrived at the composition studio and Matilda first spent about an hour reading through all the questions (it’s a 6 page long questionnaire) and then spent another 20 minutes answering it! It’s unbelievable that I am so lucky to have a friend like this! (If this were a Facebook status I would add the mood “feeling blessed”!)

Matilda helping me with my thesis in the middle of the  night on a Friday!

Vappu Day

Thursday first of May, Vappu day. Woke up very late. Only had time for lunch before I already headed back to Tampere Hall for handing out flyers after another Tampere phil concert. Today the audience was more reluctant than ever towards the flyers.

I had a good intention of actually going home and writing my thesis, because I have to give it in on the 9th of May. But before I knew it a friend of mine had already bought me a drink from the Tampere Hall.

Today I met Anton Chausovskii, the alternate concertmaster of Tampere Philharmonic. He is originally from Russia and has worked several years in Pori Sinfonietta, so I asked him how he liked living in Finland. He said he was very happy with the cultural life in Finland, which he finds is very active and well working. He also told me he was looking for new solo violin pieces and I told him I am at the moment writing a piece for solo violin which I would love to have performed (once it's ready), so I said I would send him a score when I'm done.

I, who was supposed to go home and write my thesis after handing out flyers, found myself eating dinner at Telakka with a friend and afterwards, once again, dropping by Annika’s place, though this time already at around 19 o'clock. It was cold outside (about + 8°C) but we were brave Finns and grilled sausages, chicken and halloumi cheese outside, simply because we could! I just ate salad, so I got quite cold and went home quite early (around 23 o’clock).