Happy Easter!

Easter Sunday, 20th of April. Last night I went to the Easter Vigil (Midnight mass), which is my favorite mass of the whole year and which also is the most important mass of the whole year, the night when Jesus resurrected. I like the Gregorian chants we sing in the mass. Most of all I love the wonderful candle light happening. The lights are all turned off and then the entire flame spreads from candle to candle to the whole parish and so the whole room gets lit up by all the candles! Before we used to stand in the candle lit church for a very long time, but for some reason (maybe safety reasons?) we nowadays just stand a little while in darkness before the electrical lights are all switched on (which is a pitty).

The Easter Vigil 2014 at Saint Marys church in Helsinki. © C.Damström

The Easter Vigil 2014 at Saint Marys church in Helsinki. © C.Damström

This morning I also went to the main mass and after that we had dinner with my mother and father and it was really nice. Due to childhood traditions my mother had hid easter eggs around the living room, this time real (boilt) eggs though. Although I’m 25 I still enjoy the easter egg hunt! The rest of the day was less interesting, writing my thesis once again.

Writing my thesis in the sun on the balcony at my parents place

Good Friday. Really?

It’s the 18th of April and it’s Good Friday today. Although I don’t know if it’s actually such a good Friday… I have spent all day writing my thesis and I’M SO BORED!!

I don’t understand how this can be the main part of so many university students life! I mean, so many people write a thesis for ages and ages! And I find it sooooo boring! Well, the only good things about this Friday were the good weather and the fact that I got something done at least. But this is nothing to blog about.

Getting Flyers Ready

Thursday April 17th. This whole day has been dedicated to getting the flyers done for my composition concert. I wanted to get them done today so that I can hand it out to people at church during Easter (next weekend).

But there were a few complications. I wrote to our (Tampering’s) graphic designer Ida Sokka and asked if she had the flyer ready yet and she replied “I sent it to you already”. Well turned out that the email had somehow managed to loose it, and I never got it! Ida commented “oh that explains why you never said thank you” with a smile. So funny when you notice these misunderstandings…!

So Ida sent me the flyer, but I didn’t first notice there was a mistake: the date was wrong! This turned out to be my bad, because I had sent her the wrong date by mistake (no idea how that could happen, so embarrassing! I’ll blame my dyslexia…). Ida was so nice and managed to correct the date within a few hours, and more over added more wonderful colours to the poster so it became even better!

Now having the right poster I hurried off to school for getting it printed by our PR department. It’s great that my concert is in co-operation with TAMK, because it helps a lot with printing costs of advertising and flyers!

After having got everything done I went straight to church for Maundy Thursday mass, and after that I packed my bags and am now sitting in the train heading to Helsinki for my upcoming Easter “holidays”.

Conducting Class and Aarni Pennanen’s Recital

Wednesday the 16th of April. The day began with a really interesting seminar about percussions, held by our percussion teacher Harri Lehtinen. The thing that actually was most inspiring about the whole lecture was how super enthusiastic Lehtinen is about his own instrument. He thinks we composers should have a course about the history of all the percussion instruments, because two or three seminars isn’t enough for anything he said. This total commitment and enthusiasm is quite contagious, which is great!

After the seminar I headed of to Pirkanmaan musiikkiopisto for a second day of conducting lessons with Ari Rasilainen. This time I conducted my arrangement of my own piece “Kallare” (from my song cycle Dagbok). It has a lot of changing bar measures , so I find it hard to conduct (especially to also make music of it and not only be a metronome).

Once again Rasilainen began with a very accurate comment: “Now you are only hanging along on a ride while you actually at least should be the driver of the ride!” Well, I agreed with him but I had a hard time getting on that ride anyway, as also all the musicians were still sight-reading, so after two takes Rasilainen said “This piece seems good, can I please conduct it once? I want to know what it’s supposed to sound like.” So then he simply conducted it and concluded “Yes, very nice piece, you write very interesting music! Do you mind if Dae Myeong Park also conducts the piece?” which I of course didn’t mind at all. Also Park sight-read the piece perfectly and it was fun following once again from the side what other conductors pick out from my music.

The rest of the afternoon has gone past very quickly. I had to go and get my vegetable bag from Runsaudensarvi, then I went and listened to the chamber choir Näsin Äänis rehearsal of my pieces for my concert 14.5. I couldn’t though stay the whole rehearsal, because at 19.00 I wanted to go to a concert. I had once again a hard time choosing which concert to go to, because I had three alternatives: the string quartet “Uusi Helsinki Kvartetti” concert (who are quartet in residence at TAMK and also teach us chamber music), the concert of TAMK’s pianists or Aarni Pennanen’s recital. I chose the last one of these, because I knew how important it was for Aarni that his friends came to his concert.

The programme at Aarni’s recital was:

Modest Mussorgsky: Gopak

Usko Meriläinen: Opusculum

Johannes Brahms: Sonata in A-major

I.               Allegro amabile

II.             Andante tranquillo

III.           Allegretto grazioso

Matilda Seppälä: Itus

Sergei Prokofiev: Sonata in f-minor

I.               Andante assai

II.             Allegro brusco

III.           Andante

IV.          Allegrissimo – Andante assai, come prima

Pianist Tina Kärblane, who teaches accompaniment at TAMK, accompanied Aarni. It was a really nice concert and Aarni is such a great violinist! In his recital he played my good friend Matilda Seppäläs piece Ictus. It has been performed both by Aarni (premiere) and Tatuarttu Ruponen, an other great violin student. Their versions of the piece are very different but I like both interpretation of the piece.

I don’t know why I never have fallen in love with Brahms, he simply hasn’t got that something for me. The sonata was once again really nice and all, but it was nothing to me compared to Prokofiev! Prokofievs sonata is such a wonderful piece of music! And in over all it was an absolutely fantastic concert! I also took some really great pictures today but can't find the memory card anymore, so I will upload the pics later in case I find them...!

Conducting Class with Ari Rasilainen

Tuesday the 15th of April. Piano class at 9 AM went much better than I could ever have expected! My teacher was really happy and noticed I had improved since last week! And I who still 9 hours ago was thinking about cancelling class! So I was very happy!

After my piano class I headed straight to Pirkanmaan Musiikkiopisto. My friend Aarni Pennanen, who is studying violin and conducting in University of music Würzburg, is a great energetic spirit, who now has arranged a short conducting course! The teacher is his own teacher from Würzburg, Finnish conductor Ari Rasilainen, who has come to Finland for the term break.

Aarni has also arranged a string quartet to play at the course and someone played on a piano the parts that the strings didn’t cover. The conducting pupils of today were Aarni, his friend Dae Myeong Park from Würzburg (also studying conducting), the viola player Taavi Nachtingall and me.

My conducting was an absolute disaster today. I had chosen to conduct Edward Griegs piano concerto, and my study mate Tuomas Honkkila was playing the solo parts. The piece has a lot of tempo modulations and other things that are difficult for an amateur conductor like me.

Rasilainen was very strict and straightforward and shouted: “What the heck are you doing? You are waving like a metronome; every kid can stay in tempo! Make music! You have to throw your self into the music and do it fully 100%, and if it goes wrong, then let it go properly wrong! But don’t be so afraid to feel and show your feelings and ideas, that is what you are there for!”

Well, that is one of the hardest things to learn with conducting, to be confident although you have been conducting for only 5h in front of people in your whole life… But I really enjoy the course! Some reader might think that Rasilainens comments might have intrigued me, but they were accurate and truthful, so that is why I enjoy the course (although I of course DID feel a bit intrigued the moment I was in front of the others and he said these comments). But still, afterwards, all I felt was satisfaction. Isn’t it strange how “sadistic” a musician can be?

After this I had lunch, a piano pedagogic seminar, a lesson with my piano pupil and then I met up with my former flat mate, trumpetist Mari Pakarinen and we had dinner.

For the evening I headed back to school and made a new arrangement of the third movement “Kallare” from my song cycle Dagbok. I arranged it for string quartet and piano.  I had to also re-arranged the singing part for all these instruments, as I won’t have a singer tomorrow. This arrangement I did only for being able to practise the conducting of this movement at tomorrows conducting class. I thought it would be quick to re-arrange the piece, as it’s only about 1’30 min long, but I don’t know if it was due to me being so tired or what it was, it took me anyway like 3 hours! But at least I got it all ready and all parts (for each player) done for tomorrows conducting class.

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!

Tampere Biennale Day 4 (Part 2: Lecture Concert II, Music and Darkness & Klubi)

Saturday April 12th. At 19.00 the second lecture concert called Music, Mathematics and Everything took place in the Tampere Cathedral.

“Professor of Space Astronomy Esko Valtaoja and organist Susanne Kujala will discuss the fascinating historical ties between music, mathematics and astronomy, with intriguing insights into the development of Western music and science.”

TampereRaw and Uusinta ensemble. © Maarit Kytöharju

The programme was:

Esko Valtaoja – speaker, Susanne Kujala – organ, Veli Kujala – electronics, TampereRaw, Uusinta Ensemble

Olli Virtaperko: Dawkins (2007-2008)

I Kopioitujat (Replicators)

II Kohti monimuotoisuutta (Toward Polymorphism)

III Ikuiset kierteet (Immortal Coils)

13'-15'

Vincenzo Galilei: Dialogo (1568)

Johannes Kepler: Sfäärien harmonia (1609)

Juhani Nuorvala: Prélude non retouché (2012)

Veli Kujala: CybOrgan (2012)

I –UM

II On the Strand of Remoteness 

III Warp

21'



Duration approximately 90 min, no intermission.

TampereRaw and Uusinta ensemble. © Maarit Kytöharju

Tampere Cathedral is a very nice place for having concerts; it is very big, has a long echo and is decorated by one of the most famous Finnish artists Hugo Simberg. The only minus I can think of is that the wooden benches are very uncomfortable, so I found it quite hard to sit the whole 90 minutes without an intermission. I didn’t find this lecture as interesting as the first lecture about language and music.

Juhani Nuorvala, Susanne Kujala, Esko Valtaoja,
Veli Kujala and Olli Virtaperko
© Maarit Kytöharju

After this concert we hurried with my composer friend Dante Thelestam to the Music Hall of the Old Library House to hear the second concert by Kairos Quartett called Music and Darkness. I was actually really tired and had a headache (because it had been such a long day) but the concept of this concert was so intriguing that I “had” to go! And I’m glad I went!

“The second recital of the Kairos Quartet will present an anti-statement to the visual theme of the festival, as „In iij. Noct.”, the Third String Quartet of Austrian composer G.F. Haas, lasting about one hour, will be performed (and heard) in complete darkness.”

The programme was:
Georg Friedrich Haas: String Quartet no. 3 „In iij. Noct.” (2001)

Duration approximately 60 min, no intermission.

The hall was absolutely cramped full of people, because this is a rarity you don’t get to hear often. The reason it is performed so seldom are easy: it’s very hard for the quartet to learn this contemporary piece by heart and you can’t look at your fellow musicians at all, and it’s hard to find a venue where it is possible to get complete darkness. Because not everyone feels comfortable in complete darkness we were prepared for the concert by an introducing 3 minutes of absolute darkness in silence. After the 3 minutes the lights were dimly lit and people who felt uncomfortable were asked to leave now, because during the next 60 minutes that is not an option. I think no one wanted to leave the room.

It actually was an absolutely amazing feeling sitting in complete darkness, I can’t remember ever having been in such a place. It felt weird closing and opening my eyes as it was the whole time as black anyway. And the way you were “forced” to listen was also interesting, you had no other option than just listen 100%. (But the dark room and the headache were also challenging me with a non-electable second option: sleep.) I can’t actually say if I liked the piece or not, but still it has left a very big imprint on me and is one of the most memorable concerts I have ever been to.

After the concert I went with Dante to Klubi for the last gig of the evening. Dante only stayed four half an hour before taking the 23.06 train back to Helsinki. Apparently most other visitors from Helsinki also took that train because Klubi was quite empty and there were only few people I knew, which isn’t that common on the last evening club gig of Tampere Biennale…

Stringpurée Band © Cecilia Damström

The programme for Klubi was
21.00 Humus
22.00 Stringpurée Band
23.00 Lauri Porra Band

Lauri Porra Band © Maarit Kytöharju

Lauri Porra © Maarit Kytöharju

So after midnight when the gig was over people started heading home and I was also thinking of heading home. But the night ended late as usual.