Anna-Mari Kähärä has a calendar full to overflowing. This spring is filled with the release of a songbook, the organising of the by now traditional Women’s Day concert and performances of the musical Kysy siskoilta [Ask the sisters] at the Espoo Theatre.
I join the composer’s busy day and go to see a performance of the aforementioned musical. It is a story of a woman’s life and hormones, written and directed by Satu Rasila. Kähärä wrote the music for it in 2021, and the production has been doing the rounds in Finnish theatres ever since. Kähärä is a singer, pianist and conductor in the production. Tear-jerkingly emotional and raucously funny in turn, this production for me summarises the artistic essence of Kähärä’s career: addressing important, sometimes painful topics with joy and a gentle sort of anarchy.
Kähärä has the wonderful skill of getting an entire audience to belt out a tune as loud as they can. But what is it that so fascinates her about the human voice? The answer is obvious: Everything!
“I love the human voice! The harmonies, the colours, the improvisation, the community with all the interaction, laughing and crying!” says Kähärä. “Susanna Haavisto, the veteran actress performing in Kysy siskoilta, once said that singing and humming is the only way in which you can caress yourself on the inside, comfort yourself. Singing is good for us.”
Something even more special happens when human voices sound together. “The resonance takes you to a primeval, archaic place, at once safe and unknown in a good way. Singing together has something of a shared secret for me, even mysticism.”
Kähärä has written a number of choral pieces that have become modern classics, but surprisingly she does not have a history of singing in choirs.
“Maybe that’s why I’m so turned on by choral music, because I’ve never sung in a choir myself! Although I do insert myself into the choirs for which I write or arrange music. It’s always great to sing with them,” says Kähärä.
Kähärä’s music for choirs and vocal ensembles is particularly well received. She has also produced 10 albums, including Boundless and Joulu [Christmas] for the Rajaton vocal ensemble. “Armahan kulku” (The Lover's Path) is composed by Kähärä.
From girl trio to professional composer
Kähärä explains that the resonance of the human voice brings her back to her childhood in Viitasaari in central Finland.
“My mother would sing me to sleep, and the sound of singing lends me a sense of safety. I continued this tradition with my own child.” Her mother also introduced her to choral music, being a singer in the Central Finland Chamber Choir. Kähärä herself began music lessons on the violin, but at the age of 10 or 11 she switched to the piano.
“The piano became my favourite instrument, and I played everything from classical to evergreens and movie tunes, which I accompanied when I and my friends sang them. When I was in the upper secondary school for music in Kuopio, we started the How many sisters trio, which became an important education for me as an arranger and a composer for the next 30 years. As a student, I was also at the Kuopio City Theatre as a dancer, but that also included singing in parts.”
How many sisters broke through on national TV, singing in a popular live-broadcast music programme for two years. Kähärä arranged most of the trio’s vocals.
Kähärä has always kept herself busy in multiple musical genres and has garnered a number of awards along the way. Her palette includes film and theatre music, and she has written music for a number of soloists and for ensembles such as Tango Orchestra Unto and Rajaton. She also has her own ensemble, the Anna-Mari Kähärä Orchestra.
There is crowd power in choir communities, believes Anna-Mari Kähärä.
Crowd power
A choir is always a community, an assembly of people. What are the pleasures of working with communities?
“Singing together is pure joy. For a composer, it’s a treat to hear your piece performed for the first time and realise that it’s ok!” Kähärä begins. “And it’s not just about singing. Shouting together and improvising together can also be enjoyable. Also, choirs and vocal ensembles socialise beyond the music. Going out to party after rehearsals or concerts with a choir is such great fun – and usually they end up singing there too!”
Communities are not without their challenges, though. Choirs are institutions that have their own ways of working. The vast majority of choirs in Finland are amateur choirs.
“They may have amazing artistic quality, but at the end of the day those people have day jobs, so you can’t have rehearsals all day like with professional musicians. Combine that with slow communication, and it means that you can’t be as spontaneous about repertoire as you’d like to be as a composer vis-à-vis what’s happening in society and in the world,” Kähärä explains. “You have to plan a programme well ahead for the choir to have time to rehearse it. When it’s the week of the performance, you can’t go in and say, look, we’re replacing a piece on the programme!”
Kähärä reveals that she sometimes dreams of having a choir of her own that could react to political circumstances quickly – by improvising if necessary. This stems from her drive for social activism.
“Many things in society are so slow to change that the problems never really grow old, unfortunately. Take [author and social activist] Minna Canth, for example: she wrote about gender equality over a century ago, and we’re still in the same place. Human rights and climate change are also things that we need to sing about.”
“I composed Kyrie eleison: A prayer for Finnish forests and endangered birds [Kyrie eleison: rukous suomalaisille metsille ja uhanalaisille linnuille] for the Helsinki Chamber Choir and the Sointi Jazz Orchestra. The sparrow, like so many other birds, is disappearing. The short-sightedness of decision-makers is concerning. We must protect both nature and culture – without them, we would not have this nation,” Kähärä concludes.
As an example, the by now traditional grand Women’s Day gala concert, of which Kähärä is the heart and soul, is a powerful statement for gender equality. The event fills up the main auditorium of the Music Centre in Helsinki with choirs and the work of women artists. Each year, the concert features a 20-minute work by Kähärä titled Kaikki naiset älkööt tehkö käsitöitä [Not all women should engage in handicrafts] for double women’s choir to texts by Minna Canth. The work was provided with a choreography by Sonya Lindfors.
“I want to celebrate the work that Minna Canth did for gender equality back in the 19th century. We have to march for the cause for as long as it takes to achieve equality. Besides, the concert provides employment for about 100 women artists every year – writers, poets, performers. I want to showcase their valuable work.”
Kähärä considers that difficult topics may be easier to address in singing for the purpose of raising awareness and eliciting emotions. In 2024, she set section 6 of Finland’s Constitution, which prohibits racism, to music. At the concert, three choirs joined in singing this clause from Finland’s Constitution: “No one shall, without an acceptable reason, be treated differently from other persons.”
“When I’d written the piece, many people confessed with some shame that they hadn’t known what that section actually says. The song illustrated the text for them in a new way,” Kähärä reveals.
“We think we know a lot of things, but actually we don’t know nearly as much as we think we know. This is another great reason for writing music, because I learn about so many things through my work. I do research in various ways, depending on the topic and the circumstances.”
The soundtrack for Armotonta menoa was nominated for the 2023 Harpa Award for Best Score. In this video, Kähärä talks about the composition process and the film.
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one shall sing
Kähärä’s streak of social consciousness emerged with the score she wrote for the documentary film Armotonta menoa – hoivatyön lauluja [Ruthless Times – Songs of Care] directed by Susanna Helke. The documentary focuses on the crisis in care for the elderly in Finland and includes not only documentary material but also fictional scenes where a ‘choir of nurses’ sings songs written by Kähärä. The recording was made for the film by the Philomela women’s choir.
The documentary is arresting for a number of reasons, including the fact that the music opens up a channel for anxiety, fear and disillusionment about the state of care for the elderly. The film won multiple awards and award nominations when it came out in 2022.
“The music that I wrote for the film was settings of texts from anonymous letters written by professionals in the care industry. It was heavy stuff – the carers had to send these letters to the film director in secret, because they had been instructed not to talk. But as far as I’m concerned, whereof one cannot speak, thereof one shall sing.”
The music for the documentary emerged over several years of collaboration with the director. The ‘letter songs’ were actually a late addition.
“The feedback on the film has been really great. A lot of people had not been aware of how grim the situation is in the care sector before they saw the film. If our grandparents are doing so poorly, what will our future be like? We’re the future clients of that industry. I’m happy that as a composer I’m able to shine the light on these failings in song.”
Kähärä has never been wanting for inspiration. “My head is full of music, and my phone contains thousands of themes that I’ve recorded. I can draw on that if my head begins to feel empty. All of my songs were written to be sung, to be used, to be shared. The problem is that there are so many of them that I haven’t had time to make fair copies of all of them. And I’m so busy making new things all the time that I don’t have the time to edit music for publication! I’ve tried to mend my ways a bit in that respect,” Kähärä explains.
Kähärä wants to allow songs to take the time they need.
“There’s so much music to write and there are so many things to say. I’m inspired the most by poems, by words. I look for poems that are musical in that they sort of set themselves to music. I don’t want to force the words to conform to the music. I’m very intuitive. I want the poem to take me to the right place. I try to find what the poet has wanted to say, to hear between the lines.”
Featured photo: Anna-Mari Kähärä
Translation: Jaakko Mäntyjärvi
