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by Marja-Leena

Isabel Bayrakdarian in Armenia

Last Thursday evening we decided to do a rare thing and watch TV, specifically CBC’s Opening Night which featured A Long Journey Home.

This is a beautifully filmed and spiritually moving documentary that follows Armenian-Canadian operatic soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian on her emotional first visit to her ancestral homeland. Her journey takes her from Yerevan, the modern capital, along an ancient silk road to churches and ruins tucked away in Armenia’s remote mountain regions. As the first country to embrace Christianity Armenia has the oldest Christian churches in the world.

Isabel Bayrakdarian is becoming an expert on the music of Armenia’s iconic composer, Gomidas or Komitas (1869-1935) who collected and preserved thousands of ancient Armenian folk songs before the genocide of 1915. In addition to the folk music, Komitas arranged a great deal of sacred music. So it was that she sang many of his compositions in several churches and ruins, sometimes accompanied by a girls’ choir or an adult one, or by a marvelous duduk quartet.

I particularly loved the ancient church she visited which was carved completely out of the rock of a mountainside (possibly Geghard Monastery?). I connected with her immense awe over this “living ancient” rock and when she sang in here with her glorious voice, the wonderful acoustics made me shiver.

Sometimes her singing made me remember the haunting music of the Romanys who travelled the Silk Road as so powerfully and movingly presented in the film Latcho Drom.

And all through A Long Journey Home, we kept recalling the film Ararat by Atom Egoyan that we watched over a year ago and in which, in fact, she sang some of the background music.

This CBC-TV production is available as a DVD for those who might be interested – I highly recommend it! Do read this recent interview and article in Globe and Mail’s Engineering News of all places! Can you find out why? (I’m not sure how long this link will remain active.)

Addendum Feb.15,2006: I just came across these excellent photos of sacred sites in Armenia

January 22, 2006 in Culture, Films, History, Music by Marja-Leena 2 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

musician of the year

Today, I’m pleased at this news in Helsingin Sanomat International:

Esa-Pekka Salonen named Musical America’s “Musician of the Year”
Musical America has named the Finnish conductor, composer, and music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Esa-Pekka Salonen as its “Musician of the Year 2006”. Salonen received the award in New York last night. The Musician of the Year award was launched in 1960 and is one of the most prestigious honours paid to classical artists in the USA today.

In a nice coincidence, the Musical America award was won by a Finn for the second consecutive year. Last year Finnish soprano Karita Mattila, a regular soloist on the stage of the New York Metropolitan Opera, was named the Musician of the Year 2005.
     
Other awardees in various categories over the years include Leonard Bernstein (1961, 1989), Yehudi Menuhin (1966), Plácido Domingo (1977), Herbert von Karajan (1990), and Sir Simon Rattle (2002).

Musical America is an international directory of the performing arts. Its annual print publication features over 14,000 detailed listings of worldwide arts organisations and over 10,000 artists are indexed in its alphabetical and categorical indices.

Coincidentally, I just opened some mail received a while ago, issue #5 of the Suomen Silta/Finland Bridge, a magazine for Finnish expatriates that I subscribe to. On the front cover is a photograph of Esa-Pekka Salonen, with an article inside. He has received the Expatriate of the Year award for 2005, for his own brilliant career, and for helping make Finnish music and musicians known around the world. I recall Karita Mattila also received the award a few years ago.

December 13, 2005 in Finland, Estonia & Finno-Ugric, Music by Marja-Leena Comments Off on musician of the year

by Marja-Leena

Sibelius…the Last Swan

sibelius.jpg
Images from Jean Sibelius biography site.

Canadian Friends of Finland, Vancouver Chapter, presents:
SIBELIUS…..THE LAST SWAN
A stage play performed by Western Gold Theatre
Saturday October 29, 2005, 2 – 3.30 pm
Scandinavian Community Centre, 6540 Thomas St., Burnaby, B.C.
The one-hour play will be followed by a discussion of the subject.
Admission $ 10, refreshments included

A highly original piece by Don Mowatt and Harri Virtanen, Sibelius….the Last Swan is a documentary play with music about the creative and physical problems overcome by love and courage in the great Finnish composer’s last years.

Don Mowatt was Radio Arts Producer for thirty-four years at CBC, producing over a thousand radio plays and documentaries as well as writing and producing for Ideas, In Performance and The Arts Tonight. He is the recipient of several awards, including two George F. Peabody Medals, the highest broadcast award available. He is one of three co-artistic directors of Western Gold Theatre.

Western Gold Theatre was founded in 1994 by the distinguished Canadian actor and director, Joy Coghill, to establish a community of accomplished senior performing artists. The company aims to produce and present outstanding professional theatre that expands horizons and enriches the lives of mature artists and their audiences. The theatres seminal production was a creative exploration entitled The Dream Project which was the subject of a CBC documentary, The Courage to Dream. The company takes dramatic readings out into the community on a regular basis throughout the year, and has produced and commissioned four major stage plays in recent years for the Vancouver Playhouse, The Arts Club Theatre and the Belfry Theatre in Victoria.

The cast : Lee Taylor – Sibelius, Doris Chilcott – Aino, Christine Anton – Eva, Don Mowatt – Kajanus

SIDENOTE: This announcement came in an email notice that goes out to members, like myself, of the Vancouver chapter of Canadian Friends of Finland, one of many Nordic organizations that are based at the Scandinavian Community Centre. The Canadian Friends of Finland, Ottawa branch has a good site explaining its mandate and programs.

We saw this play a few years ago at the Centre, found it very moving, enjoyed it tremendously and highly recommend it!

October 15, 2005 in Culture, Finland, Estonia & Finno-Ugric, Music by Marja-Leena Comments Off on Sibelius…the Last Swan

by Marja-Leena

opera in Finland

Savonlinna.jpg

I’ve suspected for some time that Charles Downey of Ionarts is “quite a Finnophile”, as he admits in a great post about Finnish opera and the Savonlinna Opera Festival.

For me, Savonlinna is a special town in the beautiful lakes region of eastern Finland, the region where I come from. On two different visits to Finland with my family, we stayed with an uncle there. The first visit he treated us to a performance of Wagner’s “The Flying Dutchman” at Olavinlinna Castle, where the Savonlinna Opera Festival has been held every summer since 1967. The opera was magical and memorable with the magnificent setting of stone walls and open sky.

In 2000 we went again and saw Gounod’s “Faust”, again a truly great experience, now with a permanent cover over the courtyard. I’m sure that on our next visit to Finland someday we shall go back, and also it’s not far from my favourite art gallery Retretti.

Charles Downey “harbor(s) dreams of going one day to the Savonlinna Opera Festival in Finland” perhaps in 2007 – and perhaps we shall meet there! Thanks for jogging some happy memories, Charles.

July 28, 2005 in Finland, Estonia & Finno-Ugric, Music by Marja-Leena 2 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

visual music

Kandinsky.jpg
Wassily Kandinsky: Painting with White Border 1913

This description in Thursday’s Arts Journal really captured my imagination:

Art in Musical Terms – There is a relationship, but does one describe the other? The notion was to take the novelty of abstract art, so radical before World War I that it could hardly be imagined, and justify it by comparison to music. If a Beethoven string quartet could be understood and admired on its own terms, without imagining that it painted a sonic picture of the world, visual art should have the same freedom to escape from rendering reality. The notes and timbres and structures of music could be compared to the colors and textures and forms of a painting; a talented artist could assemble them into a visual “composition” every bit as affecting, meaningful and praiseworthy as anything that goes on in a fancy concert hall.

The quote is from a review by Blake Gopnik in Washington Post of the new exhibition Visual Music: Synaesthesia in Art and Music Since 1900 is at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC. The presentation brings together the work of forty artists and an array of media, including painting, photography, film, light projection, computer graphics, and immersive environments. Some of the artists represented are Man Ray, Paul Klee, Georgia O’Keeffe and Wassily Kandinsky.

Thinking About Art also has a review, by artist-blogger Kathleen Shafer. A commenter there provided a link to the Hirshhorn’s interactive website – worth a look for us unfortunates who cannot make it to Washington to see this.

By the way, Kandinsky is one of my favourite painters, a feeling reinforced by seeing the largest collection of his works anywhere along with the Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) group at Lenbachhaus in Munich in 2000.

June 25, 2005 in Art Exhibitions, Music, Other artists by Marja-Leena 2 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

Beethoven

Last night we enjoyed the first free downloads of Beethoven’s music from BBC Radio, thanks to mirabilis. The BBC is broadcasting all of Beethoven’s works this week, and some available to download free the day after. I think only the symphonies are available, but I do wish my favourite piano sonatas would be as well. If you like Beethoven as much as we do, check it out!

We actually have a treasured record collection of all of Beethoven’s works, the Beethoven Bicentennial Collection by Deutsche Grammophon that was made on his 200th anniversary, rarely played now. We just haven’t gotten around to going through the rigamarole of digitizing these, so these free downloads are a treat. I played these through iTunes on my Mac, with the Visualizer turned on (when not composing or reading blogs). I love the Visualizer with its ever shifting colours and designs in constant motion to the music – very trance inducing! There is something about letting the eyes have a place to focus while listening.

Once we’ve got all these downloads together from BBC, they’ll go on our iPod which we usually keep on our bedside connected to inMotion speakers (which are much better than the speakers on this Mac). These come with us when we travel so we can play our favourite music in the car and in our rooms. I don’t mean to be advertising, but these have really increased our music-listening pleasure when away from the CD player in the living room.

Speaking of classical music, Chandrasutra* has started a series ‘Adventures in classical music’, with the first part on Schubert. If Beethoven comes up, this could be my personal contribution. In my piano-lesson days Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata was my absolute favourite. I think I might still be able to play it though pretty rustily in that fast part!

*Chandrasutra’s blog no longer exists, sadly. Link removed.

June 8, 2005 in Music by Marja-Leena 4 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

‘Rings’ debut in Toronto

The much-anticipated stage adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’ trilogy will have its world premiere in Toronto, producers announced in London Tuesday. The $27-million show, co-produced by Toronto’s Mirvish Productions, will open in March 2006 at the Princess of Wales Theatre with a largely Canadian cast […] The show had been scheduled to debut in London this spring […] However, there was no theatre available to accommodate the massive and technically complex three-hour production. (from CBC.ca*)

Last year I wrote about some interesting Finnish connections to the ‘Lord of the Rings’. First it was about Tolkien’s study of the Finnish language and the Kalevala. Then I wrote about the contributions of Finnish culture including folk group Värttinä’s music to the stage adaptation musical of the ‘Rings’.

Now I also discover several Canadian connections, including a Canadian creator of the music score and composer of a Rings symphony:

The music is by Bollywood composer A.R. Rahman, responsible for the U.K. hit Bombay Dreams, and Finnish group Värttinä’.[…] The Canadian Children’s Opera Chorus produced an opera adaptation of Tolkien’s The Hobbit last summer and Toronto-born composer Howard Shore, who created the score for Jackson’s films, adapted his music into a symphony work entitled The Lord of the Rings: A Symphony in Six Movements for Orchestra and Chorus. The piece has been performed to sold-out audiences around the world.

Some further reading in news around the world:
more in CBC*
BBC
the Aussie news*
Kaleva.plus in Finnish*

Thanks to a new reader in Finland who sent me a scanned clipping of the news item from the print version of Helsingin Sanomat. Now, I wonder if my cousin in Toronto has a spare bedroom?

** Updated 27.08.2015 – expired links removed

March 17, 2005 in Books, Films, Finland, Estonia & Finno-Ugric, Folk Legends & Myths, Music by Marja-Leena 2 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

Music meme

Anna passed this to me, and while I have a vague idea of what a meme is, I’ve never done one. These questions are very challenging and time-consuming to answer and how can I limit myself?! I’m to pass it on – who would like to pick this up?

1. TOTAL AMOUNT OF MUSIC FILES ON YOUR COMPUTER: over 800 (not 100 as I wrote before!), actually on the iTunes on my husband’s computer. We share the same tastes so he looks after downloading the music off our CD collection. We enjoy falling asleep and waking up to the music from our iPod through inMotion speakers. These come along on trips too.

2. THE LAST CD YOU BOUGHT WAS: P&#225lg&#225h, by S&#225mi singer Aune Kuuva

3. WHAT IS THE SONG YOU LAST LISTENED TO BEFORE READING THIS MESSAGE? I don’t remember, because I wasn’t listening to music just then. The last songs I fell asleep to last night were either from our very favourite Operamania collection of 5 CDs of the some of the best operatic songs by the best singers, or maybe Thomas Hampson’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn, wonderful German lieder, like lullabies! We have our collection playing at random, hence I’m not sure which was playing as I drifted off to dreamland.

4. FIVE SONGS THAT YOU OFTEN LISTEN TO OR THAT MEAN A LOT TO YOU (IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER):
I’m going to name the CDs rather than individual songs, though it’s hard to say which are the top 5 favourites. I’ve chosen some Finns, some Canadians and a Chinese artist.

– Three Finnish Basses (Matti Salminen, Jaakko Ryh&#228nen, Johann Tilli). I do love the bass voice that is so favoured by the Russians, and this is a tongue-in-cheek spin-off of The Three Tenors.

– Yo-Yo Ma’s The Cello Suites inspired by Bach – again the deep “voice” of the cello resonates for me.

– Kantele Meditation by Arja Kastinen. It was a gift from my husband a couple of years ago. It brings back memories of a wonderful kantele recital we heard in Finland in 2000. The kantele is an ancient Finnish and Karelian instrument.

– Loreena McKennitt’s The Mask and the Mirror (I recommended this to Anna and I see she loves it too!)

– Liona Boyd’s Miniatures for Guitar. The classical guitar is special for us, because my father built them, and our daughters play this instrument.

P.S. The piano is another favourite instrument which our daughters and I learned to play, but unfortunately our piano is silent too much these days. We have many CDs and records of piano music of the classical composers.

February 14, 2005 in Being an Artist, Music by Marja-Leena 2 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

Finnish music

Many heart-felt thanks to everyone for all the blogoversary congratulations! Extra special thank yous to Anna for the delightful little poem she wrote for the occasion, and to Charles Downey who wrote: “There’s a little post on Finnish music for you at Ionarts (really just leading you to Alex Ross’ blog).”

Charles’ post and Alex Ross’ article do please my Finnish blood! This ties in closely to my recent post on ‘does music affect behaviour?’ and the large emphasis on arts education in Finnish schools.

Ross also has an interesting quote by Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara:

When, as a very young man, I decided I was going to be a composer, it was not because I was so passionately in love with music. No, but I had found the world and life difficult, as a child and a youngster. I wanted to escape from them. I happened to read some biographers of composers and what Richard Strauss had written: that a composer could create a world of beauty of his own, for himself alone a kingdom of which he was the sole ruler. This was precisely what my own escapism needed, a world of my own I could build for myself, where no one could criticize me, there were none of the I-know-better brigade I so feared.

I was also astounded to learn just recently that Ondine, a major classical music label, is a Finnish recording company, celebrating their 20th anniversary this year! (There’s news at Ondine about Rautavaara.)

UPDATE Feb.4.05: Charles Downey certainly has led me down an interesting path of following the continuing discussion on Finnish music. I am not an expert on Finnish music or any music, so I’m learning a lot from these writers, and look forward to more promised by Alex Ross who has updated his post with this (and he’s having great fun with the umlauts!):

“Lisa Hirsch offers hër öwn thöüghts, emphasizing the incredible Finnish music-education system. Indeed, as I’ll say in my column next week, it’s probably the best in the world.”

Hirsch has done her research and found some excellent links on the subject. One correction I’d humbly like to make is that the population of Finland is not 10 million, but just over 5.2 million in 2003!

As I’ve mentioned before, Virtual Finland* (since expired, sadly) is my favourite and perhaps the best portal to almost everything about Finland. There’s a long page on Finnish music education. It mentions how history and the character of the people are an important foundation behind the decisions and the success of the music (and other arts, I add) education programs:

The results of Finnish music education have recently been attracting a great deal of attention, both at home and abroad.
In comparative situations, for example at the conferences of the International Society of Music Education (ISME), the Finnish system is recognized with surprise and admiration. Finnish children’s and youth choirs are becoming famous, and new international talents – conductors as well as singers and instrumentalists – are frequently stepping into the limelight.

But is this picture complete? Is there just a narrow elite with an international reputation or is there more to it – is the whole Finnish system of musical education exemplary? There are obvious reasons why so many high-standard achievements are possible, but there is also another side to the coin.

Finns, although quiet and reserved by nature, have a need to express themselves and their feelings through singing, acting, making pictures or other handicraft products. Unlike many old Central-European cultures Finnish people still have an unbroken bond with their own age-old culture where man has been a participating factor, a “subject”. An excellent proof of this is the uninterrupted popularity of folk music, which is in a constant state of creativity and renewal.

Thanks to the leaders of the 19th-century national awakening, we are not ashamed of our musical heritage; on the contrary, not only contemporary music but other branches of culture also draw strength from it. When Pekka Halonen, painter and Jean Sibelius’s contemporary, went to Paris to study, he took a kantele with him, and he would play it to sooth his nerves in the babel of the metropolis.

February 3, 2005 in Finland, Estonia & Finno-Ugric, Music by Marja-Leena Comments Off on Finnish music

by Marja-Leena

does music affect behaviour?

On my daily blogstroll I found this interesting article on today’s Arts Journal. Okay, I admit a little bias here because the mention of Finland particularly caught my eye.

Does Classical Music Cure Petty Crime? Anything Else? (Hint: Think Finland)

So some rail stations in England are playing classical music to scare away hoodlums. Bust[sp] doesn’t music have a more profound effect? Which country achieved the best Year 10 results in science and mathematics last year? Finland is the answer. Yes, Finland, with a population the size of Scotland’s and an impenetrable language. What are the Finns doing right? Every child in Finland is given an instrument to play from the first day at school. They learn to read notes on stave before letters on page. They spend hours at drawing and drama. The result is a society of with few tensions and profound culture. Finnish Radio broadcasts in Latin once a week. Finnish railways do not need to play Sibelius, except for pleasure. (PISA link added by me)

Is this not another example of why arts education is so important to society?

On a personal note, I find stores that play loud rock music with that never-ending pounding beat give me a headache (would it cause me to turn violent?) and I leave quickly, rarely leaving any money behind. Maybe that’s their intent – keep out anyone over 30, hmm?? Granted, Muzak isn’t great either. Tastes in music are wide, so why not just leave it out of the stores, or at least turn the volume down, please. I wonder if anyone else feels this way about music in public places?

January 21, 2005 in Finland, Estonia & Finno-Ugric, Music by Marja-Leena 3 Comments »

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