FMQ - festivals Articles

Life without music festivals is a mistake

How do you start a new music festival? In this column, Professor Seppo Kimanen, founder and organiser of multiple prominent classical music festivals in Finland, looks at the past and the future, the latter with specific reference to the newly established Lauttasaari Music Festival. “It’s a paradox: in order for a festival to feel the same, its content must be different every time. Continuous renewal and remaining in touch with the times are the keys to long-term success,” Kimanen writes.

Seppo Kimanen

August 16, 2024

Features

Snapshots from Finnish summer festivals

Finland is renowned for its summer festivals held across the country. Our snapshots offer a glimpse into the highlights of this year’s festivals.

FMQ

August 25, 2023

Features

What Makes a Music Festival Theme?

A carefully considered theme makes a music festival more than a sum of its parts, and a theme can operate on many practical levels: as a loose headline, a source of inspiration for planning, a spark to get the audience interested, or a narrative thread reaching to each detail. Heads of six Finnish festivals talk about their themes for this summer.

Harri Kuusisaari

May 31, 2023

Features

A guide to the Finnish contemporary music scene

Are you new to Finland and a friend of contemporary art music but do not know where to look for concerts in this field? Then this article is exactly what you have been looking for! Composer Cecilia Damström introduces readers to the contemporary music scene in Finland and gives tips on how to look up concerts, festivals and more.

Cecilia Damström

April 20, 2023

Features

Jazz and the City

Since its launch a decade ago, We Jazz has broken the mould of a traditional festival by spreading into unexpected venues while expanding to become a record company, shop and magazine.

Santeri Kaipiainen

January 20, 2023

Features

This should be good: Finland’s weird but wonderful festival summer

"The five festivals listed below should be good, but connoisseurs should take their cue from these as regards what to look for and prepare for more generally in the festival summer."

Kare Eskola

June 27, 2022

Reviews

Organic equality at the Musequal Festival

Endorsing equality in classical music in artistically meaningful and organic ways is no small endeavour. Yet, this was the very goal undertaken last weekend at Musequal Festival* in Janakkala, circa hundred kilometres north from Helsinki.

Jari Juhani Kallio

May 25, 2022

Columns

Tampere Jazz Happening: 40 years of pushing the boundaries, and self-obliteration

"What makes someone visit the same music festival for 40 years without a break? This is what has happened to me with Tampere Jazz Happening", writes music journalist Harri Tuominen.

Harri Tuominen

November 22, 2021

Reviews

The bearable heaviness of Kaivos

The Kaivos festival, held at the disused copper mine in Outokumpu, brought to this unique environment a serving of musical, visual and performance art that did strange things to time – being experienced by audience members variously as a meditation, a swim in the ice or a profound experience of communing with nature.

Santeri Kaipiainen

October 8, 2021

Features

When concerts moved into private spaces

During the last year, music consumption has been confined inside the four walls of individual homes, but at the same time it has expanded with the help of streamed concerts which give access to performances from around the world.

Amanda Kauranne

June 16, 2021

Columns

Nostalgia and rebellion at Time of Music 2021 - Thoughts on the concepts and practices of curating at festivals

"Could emphatic escapism in fact be the best reflection of the current time, where all of us wish that we were living in the past? Perhaps a symbolic farewell to that which is past is the best way to proceed to something new? Accordingly, the concerts at the Time of Music festival in summer 2021 will be memorial plaques of the future," writes artistic director, composer Johan Tallgren in his column.

Johan Tallgren

June 4, 2021

Features

Musica nova Helsinki 2021: in your headphones and on the town

The theme for the contemporary music festival Musica nova Helsinki this year (2–10 February) is Polytopia, referring to a plurality of locations and performance practices. The programme features world premieres, spatial art, evocative soundscapes and a societal dimension. Events with live audiences cannot be held due to the coronavirus restrictions still in place, but the festival is going ahead with a roster of online performances and radio broadcasts.

Auli Särkiö-Pitkänen

January 29, 2021

Features

Sounds of summer in Finland in 2020

At first it looked like all summer festivals would be lost this year, but now that restrictions are being eased, there are signs of revitalisation everywhere, and the field of culture is no exception. In the wake of a string of cancellation announcements, streaming events and live concerts for limited audiences are being prepared near and far. While this is a classic case of ‘watch this space for further developments’, what is Finland’s exceptional classical music festival summer looking like as of now?

Auli Särkiö-Pitkänen

June 12, 2020

Features

Tampere Biennale 2020 – Human being speaks to human being

The Tampere Biennale 2020, a contemporary music festival scheduled for April, has been cancelled to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. As a substituting programme, the Biennale and the Finnish Broadcasting Company Yle will organise a radio festival titled Tampere Biennale 2.0. Composer Jennah Vainio, the artistic director of the Tampere Biennale, spoke to FMQ about the scheduled programme of the event 2020 and about her work as a composer.

Auli Särkiö-Pitkänen

March 12, 2020

Features

Time of Music – from Finnish composers’ pilgrimage to international training ground

Viitasaari, in central Finland 350 km north of Helsinki, is the home of the Time of Music festival. Founded in 1982, it is Finland’s oldest annual festival of contemporary music. But that is not all: it is also a continuing education event with a legendary reputation. Today, the courses given at the festival attract more top-notch foreign participants than the town can accommodate. Is this Finland’s Darmstadt – or something even better than that?

Jarkko Hartikainen

August 15, 2019

Reviews

Cool music from a hot town

In a sun-drenched town only 200 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle, jazz connoisseurs mixed with locals to enjoy their 31st festival of music, at the Jazz on the Beach in Raahe, Finland.

Anthony Shaw

August 5, 2019

Reviews

Crossing the ocean - Musica nova Helsinki 2019

This year, the Musica nova Helsinki 2019 festival presented a trans-Atlantic menu. The programme plumbed deep waters and explored lovely landscapes on a sea that knows no bounds. All this begs the question: are we driftwood, or are we actively charting a course to the future?

Merja Hottinen

February 15, 2019

Features

Musica nova Helsinki 1–10 Feb 2019: Don’t miss these

Musica nova Helsinki, Finland’s largest contemporary music festival, takes place 1-10 February 2019. Here's FMQ's selection of the concerts and events you should not miss!

Auli Särkiö-Pitkänen

January 24, 2019

Columns

On Nordic collaboration

“The Nordic Music Days is the mirror of the Nordic composers’ community. At the same time, it also represents a broader symbol of Nordic collaboration which, despite its challenges in reconciling different interests that sometimes feel insurmountable, can be seen as an example of a universal opportunity for collaboration between nations. As an added bonus, the festival occasionally enables access to interesting music.”

Olli Virtaperko

October 31, 2018

Features

Music industry and climate change - it's time to act!

While climate change is a real concern for us all, there has not been a lot of noise about it on the music front so far. Committed climate action pioneers in Finland, however, include the Lahti Symphony Orchestra and the Flow Festival, both of which wish to set an example to other music organisations and provoke them to reflect on how to best participate in this endeavour that requires all humanity’s involvement.

Riikka Hiltunen

October 25, 2018

Reviews

Tampere Biennale seeks meaning in margins and musical experiments

The Tampere Biennale once again showcased a broad spectrum of new music from home and abroad. Instead of the mainstream, the festival focused on the margins of creative musical art and explored interfaces between branches of the arts.

Kimmo Korhonen

April 26, 2018

Features

The Tampere Biennale newer than ever

In April 2018 the Tampere Biennale festival of contemporary Finnish music will highlight “free radicals”. Bringing together contemporary music enthusiasts and professionals, this year’s Biennale showcases artistic freedom, fringe art, artistic interaction and a record number of new works.

Merja Hottinen

April 6, 2018

Features

The many shades of noise

“Somehow there has to be something new, and somehow the composer has to challenge himself. But employing completely new means of expression or playing around with the concept of art are not in themselves necessary for creating meaningful art.” So says composer Lauri Kilpiö, whose new piano concerto Shades of Light traces a broad arc from tradition to the present day, acknowledging both Beethoven and the aesthetics of noise.

Anna Pulkkis

November 2, 2017

Reviews

Gatecrashing the Nordic Music Days

The huge tide of humanity that almost overwhelmed the 2017 NMD was also its triumph: a characteristic gift from London, European capital of creative curiosity and of the big crowd.

Andrew Mellor

October 5, 2017

Reviews

Festivals with a personal touch

A few years ago two new events, the RUSK festival in Pietarsaari, founded by composer Sebastian Fagerlund and clarinettist Christoffer Sundqvist, and Pasimusic, composer Pasi Lyytikäinen’s own festival in northern Savo, appeared on the autumn festival map of Finland, brightening up the darkening months with their innovative offerings.

Merja Hottinen

January 31, 2017

Features

New start for Musica nova

Finland’s largest contemporary music event, Musica nova Helsinki, isn’t the product of one person’s vision, or even one organisation’s. It is an ecosystem that draws and depends upon most of Helsinki’s major musical institutions, which might explain why the German conductor André de Ridder was an astute choice to be the festival’s new artistic director.

Andrew Mellor

January 17, 2017

Features

Nature’s concert halls

In Finland, dozens of music events with strong connections to nature are organised each summer. Nature itself seems to form an integral part of a successful festival experience at these events. We discussed with music researchers Merja Hottinen and Juha Torvinen the relationships between nature, the environment, music and listening experiences.

Heidi Horila

October 7, 2016

Features

Chamber music, communality and eco-social justice: the case of Our Festival

"Through its themes and concert practices, Our Festival keeps building on the experience of living in a shared world and facing common problems."

Susanna Välimäki

October 3, 2016

Features

Fiddler on a bike tour

In summer 2015 fiddler Emilia Lajunen will undertook a concert tour of Finland by bicycle. Two months, more than 20 concerts at music festivals, over 2000 kilometres. The idea of the tour was to return to the roots of the Finnish tradition of vagabond fiddlers. On the other hand, the idea was to save the world by showing that a CO2-free tour is possible even today.

FMQ

August 6, 2015

Features

Tampere Biennale - sights and sounds

The Tampere Biennale, this year being held on 9–13 April, is the festival that shows where Finnish contemporary classical music is at. This is the second festival for composer Olli Virtaperko as Artistic Director.

Aarne Toivonen

November 3, 2014

Features

What's next for Nordic Jazz?

Not long ago, a new style of improvised music from the top of the world was taking the global jazz scene by storm. Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish bands had a novel angle on the genre and a phenomenon dubbed Nordic jazz was born. But continuing success requires idealism, contacts and hard work. The green slogan “Think globally, act locally” applies here as well.

Petri Silas

November 3, 2014

Columns

Guest column: A look out of the box

"Here in Finland there are places for innovative thinking, and it’s maybe not by accident that they are also multiculturally oriented. The music scene in Helsinki is changing,"writes composer Paola Livorsi in her column for FMQ.

Paola Livorsi

August 5, 2014

Features

Contemporary music finds new stages

The nature of contemporary Finnish music festivals is in transition. Festivals are adapting to the situation where they no longer are the only place to hear the latest in contemporary music. Each festival is now finding its own niche.

Merja Hottinen

January 3, 2008

Features

Festivals draw cultural tourists

Finland Festivals represented ten major events when it was founded 40 years ago. Since then it has grown into an umbrella organisation for over 80 festivals that tempt arts lovers to visit Finland.

Matti Tuomisto

January 3, 2008

Features

Private funding keeps Finnish music festivals alive

Festivalisation has been a trend in Finnish musical life since the 1960s. As the number of festivals increase, more and more music events receive government aid, for Finland takes equality seriously. Public funding's share of festival budgets is on the decline, however, and it is not easy to find compensation in the form of support from private companies.

Matti Tuomisto

January 6, 2006

Features

In Estonia, music is celebration

The Estonian song festival is a concept whose history and significance cannot be assessed with conventional artistic criteria. Since the last century, the song festivals organized in Tallinn have been a demonstration of Estonian culture and national spirit whose power has been strongest at crucial turning points in the nations history. On the other hand, they have also served as a showcase for a rich and original culture of singing and as a demonstration of a rare and heartfelt musical togetherness.

Antti Häyrynen

June 4, 1998

Features

Monday night fever

Two new concert series have added a welcome, broader dimension to the Helsinki contemporary- music scene. Ensembles, musicians and composers are performing new music from Finland and elsewhere.

Merja Hottinen

January 8, 1985

Features

Kuhmo Chamber Music: Enjoy!

In the summer 2019, the Kuhmo Chamber Music festival celebrates its 50th anniversary. To congratulate the one-of-a-kind festival, FMQ re-publishes Anu Karlson's article exploring the festival, its history and the"Kuhmo spirit". The article was first published in FMQ 2/1996.

Anu Karlson

January 8, 1985

Reviews

Self-portraits and variations on different times

Viitasaari was once again the crossroads for different generations of composers: from the “dinosaurs” Brian Ferneyhough and Harrison Birtwistle to recent breakthroughs such as Mark André and Pierluigi Billone, to name just a few, along with the Finnish Lauri Supponen and Heinz-Juhani Hofmann.

Paola Livorsi

January 8, 1985

Features

Checkpoint Viitasaari

This summer, the Time of Music festival will once again convert the sleepy little town of Viitasaari in the heart of the scenic Finnish lakeland into a nexus of contemporary music for creators, trends and audiences.

January 8, 1985

Features

Faster, higher, stronger

The Helsinki Universal Guitar Festival features all the dimensions of six strings.

Mika Kauhanen

January 8, 1985

Features

Festivals facing the future

Music audiences’ age structure and consumer patterns are changing, offerings are growing and becoming more varied, but for now, one thing remains unchanged: there are enough festival-goers in Finland for hundreds of festivals. Organisers must nevertheless have their feelers out for changing expectations from their customers.

January 8, 1985

Reviews

Silence Festival – The art of collaboration

“The best collaborations empower or even improve their participants. Whenever guitarist Marzi Nyman stepped up during Silence Festival he seemed to lift the creative discourse to another level with his gregarious, joyous musicianship.”

Andrew Mellor

January 8, 1985