collaboration

The Helsinki-Cotonou Ensemble has a good vibe, on stage and offstage. This can never be taken for granted, though. Both the band and the cooperative that runs it – No Problem! Music – have undertaken active efforts to sustain that vibe. One of the elements in the underlying framework is an Occupational Safety and Health Action Plan jointly drawn up by the band and the cooperative.

Saxophonist Jukka Perko has taken his musical communication ideas into other fields of working life with successful lectures combining musical thinking and everyday workplace dynamics. Can listening to improvisation in music teach us something about working together and communicating?

Musician and composer Timo Alakotila has found the perfect balance between working alone and with other musicians.

Collaborations between visual artists and musicians are leading music as an artform into new territories. Music gets conceptualised and finds new forms when contemporary artists and music professionals join forces.

The Finnish National Opera and Ballet has launched an extensive project to integrate cutting-edge technology into the world of art in multiple ways, seeking synergies and tools for new kinds of cooperation and communality in both planning and audience relations. However, the FNOB like most of Finnish society is currently shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. All rehearsals and performances have been cancelled for the time being, including the ‘Opera Beyond’ conference and premiere this spring. Obviously the world will change as a result of this crisis, and the art of opera will change too.

Collaborative composing is not common among Finnish composers of art music, and the approach raises several critical questions. Is it even possible to share musical creation and innovation with another person? Does group work inevitably lead to bland or incoherent compromises, or can it produce art of a high quality? Is the incentive for engaging in this that it is trendy or that commissioners want it that way, or do composers have other reasons for co-authoring works? Despite the numerous reservations, some composers have found collaboration to be an enriching aspect of writing music.

There is a clinic at the Music Centre in Helsinki where anything up to a dozen physicians and other health care professionals may be found treating one patient. Multi-discipline collaboration is leveraged to address the most difficult ailments at the Musicians’ Clinic.