Where Voices Meet

"There is something profoundly human about the act of singing together. When voices, each carrying their own texture and timbre, come together, they form something greater than the sum of their parts," writes editor-in-chief Lasse Lehtonen.

Finland’s choral scene is vibrant, and its professional side has further solidified in recent years. It is important for amateur and professional choirs alike to move with the times by creating new choral repertoire and providing opportunities for composers to make discoveries with the choral instrument. Recent developments have brought the choral scene to a turning point.

I fire up YouTube and browse through the channels of Finnish choirs. In the past four or five years, I have noticed a new kind of content emerging alongside traditional concert recordings: separately produced, dedicated music videos with visuals that have nothing to do with a concert setting. What are choirs aiming at by producing videos like this?

Anna-Mari Kähärä is a musical force of nature not afraid to speak her mind. She is a composer, pianist, singer and all-round musician who believes in the power of song.

Composer Mikko Sidoroff has been involved with choral music for the Orthodox Church for more than two decades. Can traditional sacred music be updated – and how? In this article, Sidoroff discusses the theological foundation for writing music and describes means by which the tradition can be enriched with new nuances.

A mixed choir exploring the borderlands between musical theatre and multi-discipline art and performing almost exclusively the conceptual-art works of its conductor Petra Poutanen boldly blazes a trail of its own beyond the realm of conventional choral aesthetics.

‍Finland’s rich choral tradition continues to thrive in diverse forms. While choir albums are recorded less frequently than in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Finnish vocal music still garners international recognition – even earning Grammy Awards. This playlist presents recordings released since 2020.

One of the most distinctive aspects of the Finnish music scene is its vibrant youth choir culture. When this article was first published in 1997, the number of such choirs was on the rise. This republication offers a unique glimpse into this fascinating phenomenon as it stood in the late 1990s.