Flashbacks and a glimpse into the future

Photos by Mirella Lehmussaari

We'd be on tour now

As I told in my previous blog post, right now I would be on the second stretch of a multinational tour with this year's Jenny Lind -prizewinner, soprano Tessan-Maria Lehmussaari. We would have visited Toronto, New York, Washington D.C., New Orleans and San Francisco in June, and would right now be touring in Sweden. As sad as it is to postpone or cancel most events this year, now we have something to look forward to in 2021! In the meantime we wanted the American friends of the Jenny Lind -tour to get a sneak peek at what's in store and recorded a few of the pieces we've been working on. This "teaser", that features music from Clara Schumann, Peter Heise and Benjamin Britten, was filmed in the Finnish Church here in Stockholm in the beginning of June by the singer herself.

Japanese film music meets street dance and manga

I collaborated with the manga artist/drawing teacher Elin Alskog Berglund and dancer/choreographer Sanda Tcacencu to plan a show that features piano music spiced up by a dance routine and live- drawing. As I mentioned in an earlier blogpost, the plan to combine different art forms in beautiful surroundings was there since I met Sanda at Våga Visa (read more about that here), but the project finally came into fruition in February this year after we found a venue and got sponsored by Nacka county.

Artwork by Elin Alskog Berglund

Elin, Sanda and I all love Japanese anime-films and we wanted to bring their strong visual aspects and music together in the form of a live show in a familiar venue, the Nacka church. We got incredibly positive feedback from the audience, most of whom had never been to a piano concert before. I've often found that the relationship between music and visual arts is an area that needs to be explored more, in fact I even wrote my master's thesis about it. So this won't be the last time I let different art forms play together! Here is a little compilation of our performance:

- Silja