There hasn't really been time to write about everything I've done recently because I've been too busy doing it! The already hectic spring came to a close with a bunch of things happening at once. My students' concert With the help of some of my students' amazing parents we organised a concert in the beautiful Djursholm. Everybody rose to the occasion and played really well. I'm proud of the whole lot of my students and happy to continue with them in the fall! My own concert Last week I played my own concert at NAV where I also have a design studio, to test drive their new piano and to celebrate my home country Finland's 100th birthday as an independent nation. My program consisted of Finnish classics for solo piano and piano-violin duo and a PowerPoint presentation. The idea was to bring the music closer to the listener by telling a little bit about the pieces before performing them, a concept I've successfully used before at the Wäinö Aaltonen museum in Turku and at Stockholm's Konstakademien. With the help of the production team at NAV and my violinist partner in crime Zaida Ponthin, I gave my audience a sample of popular Finnish classics that might not all be so well-known abroad. The concert was advertised by Opus Norden and NAV, the British International School of Stockholm wrote about it in their newsletter and I was interviewed by Sveriges Radio a few days before. Thanks for the publicity to all my networking channels! The event was a success and I have a future project going on with a similar theme... Here are some links related to the concert: - event (in Swedish) at NAV - concert calendar (in Swedish) at Opus Norden - interview (in Finnish) at Sveriges Radio The kimono In other news, I'm now designing some seriously awesome stuff for next fall's burlesque festival. In the meantime I'm a month away from the fittings of a golden unconventional wedding dress (looking forward to it!) and I've just finished the kimono (above) I was making for a client, colleague and friend, the soprano Saara Rauvala. I thoroughly enjoy making unique garments like this: it's actually a tailor-made one-of-a-kind copy of an existing garment. Sometimes a client has something they like, but they want something similar in a different color, or maybe the original's just seen better days. All they need to do is come and shop for fabrics or scavenge second hand shops with me, choose a material, lend me the original garment and I'll make a copy of it with possible alterations and always the feel of quality handcraft to the finished product. Saara will feel comfortable in this kimono and can focus entirely on her singing! Naantali music festival, day 1 The beginning of summer marks of course the start of the annual Naantali music festival where I'm currently doing my 7th year as a member of the production crew. Two intense weeks of world class concerts are ahead! Get to know the program HERE and I'll see you in Naantali, Finland, the home of the Moomin World and one of the best chamber music festivals ever. -Silja
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Silja
This blog is a work diary with updates about my life as a musician and designer. Archives
January 2023
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