The foremost Finnish composer, Jean Sibelius, was born in 1865 and died in 1957. Those were some pretty exciting years in the history of my country: there was Russification, famine, lot's of people migrating to the US, then we declared independence, there were two world wars and one civil war...enough for more than one lifetime. Sibelius drew a lot of his ideas from the Finnish mythology and nature, and created a musical language uniquely his own, and uniquely Finnish. I think it's safe to say that all Finns are very proud of that, and the fact that we retained our independence through all of that upheaval, unlike any other Baltic state. So there is cause for celebration.
The Finlandia Foundation's Sibelius150 jubilee was a very simple idea: pooling together all events in the US that include Finnish classical music. I worked with the Kerrytown Concert House, UM Scandinavian Program, Finnish Center Association of Farmington Hills and the Ann Arbor Symphony on a series of concerts in Ann Arbor in the fall of 2015. All kinds of great Finnish music, it was very exciting! The final series of events, "Sibelius and Contemporaries" took place the first week of December. DC-based, Finnish pianist Marja Kaisla and I performed recitals in Farmington Hills, and Ann Arbor, MI, and Phoenix, Arizona. The bulk of the music, Sibelius Op.78, deFalla Seven Spanish Songs and Debussy Sonata were composed in 1914/15 - in the beginning of the First World War. All of the pieces are connected by influences from folk music of their countries, exotic places, and scales (the modes and the pentatonic scales, my favorites!). The year was a wonderful opportunity to highlight Finnish music, Sibelius and others, old and contemporary. I am glad we got to perform Jouni Kaipainen's Gluhende Blumen des Lightsinns for soprano and quartet in October: we just received word that he passed away at the end of November, just shy of his 59th birthday. Rest in Peace
The Finlandia Foundation's Sibelius150 jubilee was a very simple idea: pooling together all events in the US that include Finnish classical music. I worked with the Kerrytown Concert House, UM Scandinavian Program, Finnish Center Association of Farmington Hills and the Ann Arbor Symphony on a series of concerts in Ann Arbor in the fall of 2015. All kinds of great Finnish music, it was very exciting! The final series of events, "Sibelius and Contemporaries" took place the first week of December. DC-based, Finnish pianist Marja Kaisla and I performed recitals in Farmington Hills, and Ann Arbor, MI, and Phoenix, Arizona. The bulk of the music, Sibelius Op.78, deFalla Seven Spanish Songs and Debussy Sonata were composed in 1914/15 - in the beginning of the First World War. All of the pieces are connected by influences from folk music of their countries, exotic places, and scales (the modes and the pentatonic scales, my favorites!). The year was a wonderful opportunity to highlight Finnish music, Sibelius and others, old and contemporary. I am glad we got to perform Jouni Kaipainen's Gluhende Blumen des Lightsinns for soprano and quartet in October: we just received word that he passed away at the end of November, just shy of his 59th birthday. Rest in Peace
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