Sebastian Fagerlund Music Education out of the Box
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2017 MUSIC MAKERS #FINLAND100 OUT OF THE BOX AND INTO THE FUTURE SEBASTIAN FAGERLUND EXPANDING HORIZONS IN MUSIC EDUCATION 3 EDITORIALBY Anu Ahola Musical vistas in the year 2017 www.fmq.fi During 2017, the FMQ has looked at the music culture of Finland, celebrating the centenary of her independence, in • Find more three thematic modules. One of these modules presents a cluster of music makers – articles, special original voices from a Finnish music scene that is more diverse and multicultural today than it has ever been. features, Creative and performing musicians from different back- grounds and working with different materials combine columns and familiar elements to create new things. Their work offers new approaches not just to sound and its myriad forms but reviews – new also to the world and to the human condition in general. A good example of how varied the job profile of a European items every week composer today can be is given by Sebastian Fagerlund. Secondly, we look at how some musical traditions show and all free of up today. In Finland, the kantele, the accordion, the Kale- vala and the fiddler tradition have for a long time been not charge only part of the national soundscape but also inexhaustible sources of musical innovation. But how can they continue to inspire and influence musicians today? And whose tradition • Explore our ever- is it that we are talking about, anyway? Thirdly, we look at the future from the perspective of growing selection music education. Society is changing, pupils are becom- ing more diverse and technology is advancing at an of articles from increasingly rapid pace, and those are only some of the challenges and opportunities that music education is the archives facing. What could – or should – the role of the music educator be in the society of tomorrow? In addition to these themes, we would like to revisit • Subscribe to and underline a key topic: equality and diversity. This has been an emerging subject of debate in the our monthly field of Finnish music as elsewhere. For music culture to continue to flourish, it must be able newsletter to engage people more broadly, irrespective of background, age or gender. There is plenty of diversity in artistic content; we just need to bring it out and transfer it to the struc- tures. As the year 2017 draws to a close, we wish our readers a happy exploration of new and inspiring ways of broadening horizons and eye-opening collisions. • Translation: Jaakko Mäntyjärvi 4 5 31 SEBASTIAN FAGERLUND – PORTRAIT OF A COMPOSER FROM EUROPE IN 2017 CONTENTS 33 Autumn Sonata and other excursions between the real 3 Editorial and the unreal By Anu Ahola SEBASTIAN by Merja Hottinen 37 Soundscapes on the lanes of FAGERLUND Amsterdam by Biella Luttmer 6 MUSIC MAKERS #FINLAND100 8 Magnifying musical details page 31 Paola Livorsi by Merja Hottinen 40 Helsinki’s high-tech G Livelab: 10 The many shades of noise Sound first byWif Stenger Lauri Kilpiö by Anna Pulkkis 12 Roots of rhythm 42 EXPANDING HORIZONS IN MUSIC MAKERS Helsinki-Cotonou Ensemble EXPANDING HORIZONS IN MUSIC EDUCATION by Wif Stenger #FINLAND100 page 6 MUSIC EDUCATION 44 Composing is for everyone 14 Special touch by Anu Ahola Iro Haarla by Petri Silas page 42 46 Multiple modes of music education in Nepal 16 The bourgeois modernist by Lari Aaltonen Väinö Raitio by Hanna Isolammi 50 Happy birthday to Finnish music education! by Heidi Partti 18 OUT OF THE BOX AND INTO THE FUTURE 20 The ever-expanding Kantele 52 by Tove Djupsjöbacka Recordings of the year 60 24 Free the Kalevala from Finnishness Live performances of the year by Kimmo Hakola 66 Notable numbers 26 Innovative noise box OUT OF THE BOX AND by Amanda Kauranne INTO THE FUTURE page 18 28 Pelimanni meets pixels by Amanda Kauranne Editor-in-Chief Anu Ahola, anu. [email protected] | Editor Hanna Isolammi, [email protected] | Proofreading David Threasher | Graphic Design and Illustrations Minna Luoma | Printing Premedia Helsinki Oy | Financial coordination [email protected] | Editorial address FMQ (Finnish Music Quarterly) c/o Music Finland, Urho Kekkosen katu 2C, FI-00100 Helsinki, Finland, [email protected], tel. +358 ( 0 )20 730 2230, fax +358 ( 0 )20 730 2231 www.fmq.fi | ISSN 0782-1069 | Publisher Music Finland | Partners Finnish Musicians’ Union, The Sibelius Academy, The Society of Finnish Composers | Editorial Board Kimmo Hakola (chair), Hanna Juutilainen, Lauri Kilpiö, Matti Nives, Elina Roms, Aarne Toivonen, Johanna Viksten | Subscriptions One year (1 issue) EU € 15 (+VAT 24%), other countries € 18. Subscriptions, inquiries and changes of address: [email protected] | Publication schedule December 2018 | Cover illustration Maija Kauhanen by Antti Kokkola 6 7 MUSIC MAKERS #FINLAND100 Independent Finland is 100 years old and today has a music scene that is diverse and multicultural. Paola Livorsi, Lauri Kilpiö, Iro Haarla and the Helsinki-Cotonou Ensemble are examples of very different, original voices in an increasingly pluralist body of music-makers. Jyri Pitkänen Jyri 8 FMQ FEATURE: Music Makers #Finland100 9 The idea of the video resonates well with Paola Livor- ence, so that it has a human and social aspect to it,” Livorsi si’s conceptions about music. She finds inspiration in whis- points out. pers, in the phonetic differences between languages, in the plurality of phonemes and other tiny, scarcely perceptible details of sound that, thanks to microphones and electron- Multiple means of expression MAGNIFYING ics, can be expanded into musical material. These details Livorsi has accumulated plenty of experience in multi- of sound build a musical landscape where even time itself disciplinary projects in the course of her composing career. transforms, opening up another dimension. “I believe that classical music is part of a broader field of art. “I’m often interested in details,” Livorsi confirms. “There’s Artists may have similar goals, even if they express them something that you don’t even notice, and you can expand it, with different means, materials and tools.” like putting it under a microscope. This was the origin of my Because the human voice is an important element in MUSICAL interest in electronics and in the nature of sound itself.” many of Livorsi’s works, the texts set are also important. The texts in The End of No Ending are English transla- tions of the traditional and anonymous poetry of Afghan Voices and spaces women, landay. This is a concise metre of 22 syllables that Written for two singers, percussion, ensemble and elec- is employed as a means of expression by women in a culture tronics, The End of No Ending was premiered at Livorsi’s where they are forbidden to express their feelings in public. doctoral recital at the Sibelius Academy of Uniarts Helsinki Livorsi discovered landay by accident but was so fasci- DETAILS on 20 October 2017. The recital coincided nicely with her nated by it that she has used the poetry in two of her works BY Merja Hottinen 50th birthday and is a sort of retrospective. to date. “What’s interesting about it is that it’s intimate and The theme of the concert was Voices and Spaces, which secret yet also expressive,” says Livorsi. “And there’s the encapsulates Livorsi’s long-standing interests and the key feminine aspect, too. It’s easy to identify with. The third focus points of her artistic research. thing is that it’s so very concise. Even the name of the genre, “I’ve always been interested in the human voice and its landay, is interesting: in the Pashtu language, the word potential for expression and communication,” says Livorsi. means a short, poisonous snake.” Space became an important element when she began to The second movement of The End of No Ending points to study electronic music. “Sound would not exist without the a very different part of the world, the Balkan region. The space in which it resonates, and space affects the quality of material for this movement is a Macedonian folk song that sound very much indeed.” was important for Livorsi’s recently deceased composer The human voice has a presence in the works in the colleague and friend Jovanka Trbojević. “We were both recital not only as actual singing but also as a more abstract woman composers who had migrated to Finland from south- element in instrumental works. For instance, Livorsi’s ern Europe, so we had a lot in common,” Livorsi recalls. (See second string quartet Onde (2009–10) is underpinned by an In memoriam written by Lotta Wennäkoski at fmq.fi.) analysis of the human voice. In The End of No Ending, the The performers of this work at the recital include Uusinta interface between voice and instruments is sought through Ensemble and Kurdish musician Ahoora Hosseini, who resonance. “Sometimes the vocalists speak or sing to the plays the daf and the tombak. There are two vocal soloists: percussion instruments, making them resonate,” explains Tuuli Lindeberg, who has performed several of Livorsi’s Livorsi. earlier works, and Anni Elif Egecioglu, better known as a The movement of sound in space is also important in the jazz singer and experimental musician, who improvises on new work. “The audience will perceive the music as coming the basis of the aforementioned Macedonian folk song. “In not just from the stage in front of them but from all around this work, Tuuli and Anni represent two sides of the same the hall. This music is not just for experiencing passively; it personality.” • Translation: Jaakko Mäntyjärvi can expand the listener’s perception of sound,” says Livorsi. This is a notion with which Livorsi had already experi- mented in Imaginary Spaces (2016), her previous doctoral Saara Vuorjoki / Music Finland recital, an interactive concert installation where the audi- ence could freely move around amid the sounds.