My generative sound-poetry composition PIENIÄ TOSIASIOITA (2024) will be premiered as a contemporary dance piece at Villa Rana, Jyväskylä, next Friday 20 December, with two 60-minute performances (at 18h and 20h).
This “meditative opera” will be transformed into an embodied experience of movement and play by choreographer and dancer Saga Elgland.
Due to the generative nature of the piece, each performance will be unique, different.
I’m truly excited – and full of gratitude – as I always love working with contemporary dance, yet it happens so rarely! (seeing my friend’s contemporary dance piece in 1998 was the reason I went to study sonic arts in the first place)
Here in Ghent, I’m currently finalising a new, immersive 3D version of the piece for the performance. Unfortunately I won’t be able to attend the première myself as I’ll have a doctoral seminar here that day, but I hope some of you may get to experience the piece and the wonderful work that Saga and her team has put into it!
Supported by Keski-Suomen Tanssin Keskus ry, Keski-Suomen Kirjailijat ry, KulttuuritaloVilla Rana.
Thank you to everyone who came to visit my poetry-sound installation PIENIÄ TOSIASIOITA (“small truths/facts”) at Taavettilan riihi in Jyväskylä this weekend. It was a delight to see so many visitors attending (despite the glorious summer weather outside), some even spending hours inside immersed in the experience.
The feedback I received from the audience was overtly positive, at times even rapturous which was all heart-warming (of course, people withhold any criticism they might have – I always wonder why is that?). People commended the way the voices, words and music kept emerging and unfolding in the space, creating an immersive, never-ending spatial and aural experience.
The adjective I kept hearing was that of ‘meditative’: this one author even called the installation as a kind of “meditative opera” (as in opera the narrative voice often forms the central musical element). From now on, I shall call my poetry installations as that: meditative operas.
Personally I’m very pleased with how the whole installation – poems, voices, music, their generative evolution and acoustic diffusion, architecture, environment, light etc. – turned out. Even though I’d already been listening to the piece for hours and hours while making it, I’d still find myself utterly immersed in it, captivated by how it kept producing novel combinations of its textual and sonic elements. Version 2.0 is already in the pipeline (upon request).
The space was lit by the natural light coming through the windows, and it only occurred to me during the exhibition that what an integral new layer that formed! As the piece kept unfolding within the space throughout the day, simultaneously the light kept softly changing, creating a generative experience of its own: at times it felt utterly magical.
Thank you to Keski-Suomen Kirjailijat ry and Villa Rana for making this possible. And thank you to Petri Turunen (from Keski-Suomen Kirjailijat ry) for initiating, curating and organising this project: your work was invaluable. And naturally, thank you to all the poets, whose words – spoken and written – kept inspiring me throughout the process (when my music continued failing): they made the piece the novelty and success it was.
My deepest gratitude.
Authors/poets Helmi Solimeïs, Riitta Cankoçak and Petri Turunen
This week my new poetry/sound installation PIENIÄ TOSIASIOITA will premiere as part of the opening weekend of the Art Street Jyväskylä’s autumn season (Jyväskylän Taidekatu), September 6-8. The installation will take place at Taavettilan riihi – the oldest building in the Jyväskylä city area and located within the Jyväskylä University Botanical Garden.
In the piece PIENIÄ TOSIASIOITA (“small truths/facts”), texts from nine Jyväskylä-based poets intersect, collide, become pollinated and stratified, break apart – and form new, accidental, momentary compositions. This is accompanied by discreet site-specific music created from the sounds recorded inside and outside the installation space (a “drying barn”). The voices and textual fragments of the poets as well as the musical motifs keep unfolding in a state of constant permutation, quietly self-organising and -changing – like a river that flows, an urban space in motion, or a forest following the seasons.
The featured poets:
Olli-Pekka Tennilä Suvi Valli Kristian Blomberg Riikka Simpura Petri Turunen Anniina Louhivuori Niklas Salmi Riitta Cankoçak Vesa Lahti
Welcome!
Working on the installation at the KulttuuriKauppila artist residency in Ii, Finland, July-August 2024.
Taavettilan riihi. This is the oldest building in Jyväskylä, Finland – and the site of my next sound installation!
I really love working on site-specific installations: engaging in local conditions and creating a novel kind of work that exists between architecture, environment and music – and in this case, also poetry!
While this won’t be my first site-specific piece to use spoken word*, it’ll be the first one to focus primarily on poetry, drawing from texts and voices of contemporary local poets. And I couldn’t be more thrilled: after all, this is a city known as the capital of Finnish hip hop and the Athens of Finland – not to mention for its vibrant literary scene – celebrated for its inventive command of the language.
Instead of drifting in distant server clouds as music releases do (Earth Variations, how’s the world receiving you?!?), the music in site-specific pieces becomes rooted in real habitats, acquiring new spatial and social possibilities as well as responsibilities; it becomes locally meaningful and not just globally meaningless.
And any feedback you receive for your work comes from real living beings, not from marketing spam bots (as you mostly do online).
The installation will be presented during the opening weekend for the autumn season of the city of Jyväskylä’s Taidekatu (Art Street), September 6-8. More info in due course.
* My very first site-specific sound installation, Nordic Staircases at the Round Chapel in London in 2001, was based on a recording of a poem of mine, read in different Nordic languages and electronically treated to correspond with the acoustics of the chapel’s large staircase.
Time flies, as do the ideas and potential creative directions enabled by the space and quiet of the writing residency. It’s been one of the most inspiring and productive periods ever, which will still continue for the coming spring until my next endeavours.
Early next year I’ll finally be able to start mastering the Earth Variations album, followed later by the Radiant City EP. They’ll be released in the spring and summer, respectively. Excited – and relieved!
Next year will also see the start of my major sonic art project that brings together science and art, thanks to the artist grant from the Arts Promotion Centre Finland (Taike). More about this in due course.
I’m also planning a collaboration with this Iranian santur master here in Jyväskylä in the spring. Having experienced a couple of his very moving live performances, we’ve been having inspiring conversations since, mixing music talk with those of world politics and philosophy: always a good sign. Instead of simply improvising (which I’d then have to painstakingly edit into coherent takes), he actually prefers to compose his parts beforehand – I’ve been hoping for this kind of dedication for most of my musical life! Ours will be a special EP, blending the sound of his 3000-year-old percussion-stringed instrument with my yet-to-be-finished Afromontane Sound Painter. Ancient meets futuristic.
I’m currently busy applying for a doctoral programme in this prestigious music academy in Europe. Out of over a hundred applicants, I’m pleased to say that I’m among the final four to be considered for this particular position. This is a huge honour in itself as the position would allow me to focus on an artistic research into the future of music as well as the role of composers/musicians in the future society. Fingers crossed.
My planned book (on the future society through sonic arts) has been trundling and instead diverging into a series of essays. In our monthly essay workshop here with local writers – all of them established and many with literary awards (contrast this with me) – I’ve been receiving the most unexpected feedback: so enthusiastic, constructive and critically supportive! These authors have enabled me to see my writing in a wider literary and cultural context and believe in the importance of what I’m trying to say as well as the literary style I’ve been developing. So: something new will be published in the future days.
Spotify sucks. Please, reconsider using the service if you care about music, the artists that create the music and a healthy economy that underpins any equal, productive and functioning society. Thank you. (in academic terms: SPOTIFY SUCKS. THEY ARE THIEVES AND CRIMINALS.)
Lately I’ve been making new music for various poetry readings here in Jyväskylä. This has been the most refreshing as the music is a reaction to the local culture and environment as well as the poetry in question, enabling one to approach the idea of music from often surprising perspectives. Waking up early in the wintry mornings when it’s still dark and quiet, working on a new composition while watching the light gradually dawn and reveal a landscape covered in snow and frost – an in-between state conspired by the poetry, the landscape and the emerging music where anything feels possible. It is a literal dawn of the world, a (winter) wonderland.
Have a warm and peaceful transition into the new year
Sähkö Club #42 at Vakiopaine, Jyväskylä, 9.9.2023. [a delayed repost from other social media]
What a wonderful evening! Thank you again to the audience, the performers, the Vakiopaine staff and of course the organisers, Keski-Suomen Kirjailijat ry, for inviting me.
It was a pure delight to perform to such a full house and receptive audience. After Japan, this was probably the most attentive and engaged audience I’ve had the pleasure to play for. Audiences everywhere have naturally tended to be attentive and receptive – bar the lovely but lively crowd in an El Raval gallery in Barcelona once – but there are times when the vibe from the crowd feels especially warm that it becomes part of your playing, elevating the performance differently.
And when your friends surprise you by travelling across the country to see you play, the evening feels truly special.
Thank you again to the brilliant poet Sanna Karlström for the beautiful performance together. I feel like we invented a new form of sonic art between poetry and music – at least it felt to me like wandering in another green sonic world. I’ll certainly be exploring this Terrestrial style (and its budding subgenres) more; Sanna and I will also continue performing (and possibly recording) together in the future.
Thank you also to Petteri Mäkiniemi for his fantastic, prerecorded Ginette performance that formed part of my solo live-set (I’ll post the backing track online soon).
After my solo set this woman came to tell me how my music had enabled her to travel to the time before the dinosaurs. I was flattered by this most unexpected comment – and slightly disappointed: I’d wanted to take the listeners toward the far future instead, to the time after the current dinosaurs (the fossil capitalists). But I guess any kind of time travel / possible world experience should be regarded as a success.
Warmth x
Photo: Miia LaitinenPhoto: Heta KaistoPhoto: Heta Kaisto
This Saturday I’ll be performing two live-sets at this legendary venue Vakiopaine and their similarly legendary poetry club SÄHKÖ in Jyväskylä. Come, if you find yourself in this Nordic City of Light!
This first club night of the autumn features poets Sanna Karlström, Hanna Syrjämäki and J.K. Ihalainen.
I’m excited and honored to perform together with Sanna Karlström. The multi-award-winning poet and author will be reading from her newest poetry collection Pehmeät kudokset (Otava 2022), for which I’ve created a completely new, site-specific composition that will be generated live (I refer to the musical style as “Terrestrial” – after Bruno Latour )
My solo set will include a similarly new composition, inspired by the urban condition of Jyväskylä. Expect afrorithmic cityscapes and futurhythmic environments: Terrestrial Afrorithm!
The entry is free. Welcome!
SEPTEMBER 2
Field recording. Creating sounds.
Discovering and amplifying sounds that are too fragile, ephemeral and indeterminate for the music-entertainment-industrial-complex.
There’s something a lot more gratifying in selecting and designing sounds in this way than sitting in front of a screen and clicking through thousands and thousands of the most dazzling, amazing, impressive ready-made sounds that the industry offers these days.
Music-making, here in the forest, becomes an adventure of discovery again, drawing/composing from life.
(The music will be returned to life next Saturday at Sähkö, this legendary poetry club with spoken word artists and experimental live music and sound art here in Jyväskylä … inadvertently, this new piece also became the basis for a major sonic art project that I’ll be embarking on next year! Never underestimate the potential of weak, transient and ambiguous elements, those unpromising beginnings…)
AUGUST 28
Autumn Leaves (2023).
“But I miss you most of all my darling When autumn leaves start to fall…”
It must be that time of the year again, since one has to dig out their dataflow landscape designs and do some gardening before the next live set. Pure Data is like cycling: once you have learned how to flow with it, you just never forget how freeing it is!
AUGUST 13
The joy of developing new music for a forthcoming live-set, together with various spoken word artists (more info soon).
Knowing that the music will only exist in that brief moment of time and draw from a local culture and environment is hugely thrilling for me. I currently refer to the music as “city-sensitive afrorithmic soundscapes and futurhythmic environments”. I may need to clarify that a bit.
The image is based on a photo that I took ten years ago at a rural market on the border between Benin and Togo (last night the DJ at this party played an irresistible Afrobeat groove which turned out to be a track by Frankosun and the Family – one of my collaborators from Benin! I felt so happy for them).
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composer / sound artist / writer 