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FinnFestUSA

8th–12th October 2015, Buffalo, New York, USA – FinnFest USA 2015 will take place in Buffalo, New York over a long weekend in October in special celebration of the 150th anniversary of the birth of Finnish composer Jean Sibelius and the 75th anniversary of the opening of Buffalo’s Kleinhans Music Hall, designed by the Finnish architects Eliel and Eero Saarinen and designated ‘one of the greatest concert halls in the United States’.  FinnFest USA 2015 programming will take place at Kleinhans Music Hall and the Hyatt Regency Buffalo / Hotel and Conference Center. Further information: www.finnfestusa.org/ or info@finnfestusa.org

Sibelius & Korpo 2015

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Korpo Church
Korpo Church

The Sibelius & Korpo festival, in the Turku archipelago, will take place on 17th–19th July 2015. Held in the small island village where Sibelius spent the summer holiday in 1887, this gem of a festival features concerts in the village’s 13th-century stone church and at Korpo gård, where Sibelius himself made music together with his family and friends in 1887.

Korpo gård
Korpo gård

Musicians at the 2015 festival include the Flinders Quartet from Melbourne, Australia, leading singers including Hedvig Paulig, Monica Groop and Gabriel Suovanen, the choirs Brahe Djäknar (male voices) and Florakören (women’s voices), and the pianist Folke Gräsbeck, who is also artistic director of the festival. This year’s festival is devoted exclusively to works by Sibelius, including a wide selection of his string quartet music, the Piano Quintet in G minor and the opera Jungfrun i tornet (The Maiden in the Tower) in the composer’s own version with for soloists, choir and piano.

Further information will be posted later. If you are interested in attending the festival please contact gm@sibeliusone.com.

Sibelius Forum

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Sibelius Forum screenshot

The Sibelius Forum, a discussion forum about the life and works of Jean Sibelius, was created by the Czech conductor Michael Roháč (a.k.a. ‘Kurkikohtaus’) in 2006 and now has more than 150 registered members. The forum is a place where people who really love Sibelius can enthusiastically exchange ideas about Sibelius and his music, help each other, encourage each other and first and foremost express their love and admiration for this great composer with honesty and integrity. Thanks to the high level of expertise and interest of the forum’s members, discussions are on-topic, informative and highly professional. Through his own performances of Sibelius music, Michael Roháč realized that there are people out there who really want to talk about and experience Sibelius. Not because it is a fad or snobbish fashion, but because his music communicates something to them, something profound, something stirring, something that moves the liquid-core of their being. He writes: ‘I found that through the sharing of Sibelius’ music with others, the joy and profundity of my own Sibelius experience was deeper and much more meaningful than all those years of secretive jealousy. And I realized that there were probably many more people out there like me.’ Sibelius One is proud to be associated with and to support the Sibelius Forum. http://sibelius.forumup.com

Chamber Concerts at the 2015 Lahti Sibelius Festival

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Sibelius_family_trio

Provisional details of the chamber concerts at the International Sibelius Festival in Lahti in September 2015 Chamber Music Concerts have been announced and are listed below. Further information will be made available when it is confirmed. Early indications are that demand for tickets for the 2015 festival will be exceptionally high. If you are considering attending as part of the Sibelius One group booking, please let us know as soon as possible – details here.

Tuesday 1.9.2015 at 4.30 pm – Kalevi Aho Hall (Lahti Music Institute, Hämeenkatu 4)
Folke Gräsbeck, piano
Tickets: €19 (or discount if you have bought the tickets for all orchestra concerts: €15)

Wednesday 2.9.2015 at 4.30 pm – Kalevi Aho Hall
Jaakko Kuusisto, violin – Heini Kärkkäinen, piano
Tickets: €19 (or discount if you have bought the tickets for all orchestra concerts: €15)

Thursday 3.9.2015 at 3 pm – Kalevi Aho Hall
Paavali Jumppanen, piano
Tickets: €19 (or discount if you have bought the tickets for all orchestra concerts: €15)

Friday 4.9.2015 at 3 pm – Kalevi Aho Hall
Sibelius Piano Trio
Tickets: €19 (or discount if you have bought the tickets for all orchestra concerts: €15)

Saturday 5.9.2015 at 1.30 pm – Kalevi Aho Hall
Tempera Quartet
Tickets: €19 (or discount if you have bought the tickets for all orchestra concerts: €15)

Sunday 6.9.2015 at 11 am Sibelius Hall
Sibelius on a Sunday Morning
The winner of the Third International Sibelius Singing Competition
Tickets: €24 (or discount if you have bought the tickets for all orchestra concerts: €20)

All rights reserved. E. & O.E.

‘Honest, Doctor, I only smoke ten a day…’

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Sibelius-cigar_r2©Leon_Chia
Photo: © Leon Chia

Evidence of Sibelius’s famed cigar smoking is preserved at his home, Ainola, in the majestic shape of this monster cigar, specially made as a gift for the composer. The cigar dwarfs  the famous ‘Satu’ portrait of the young composer by Akseli Gallen-Kallela, the bottom of which can be glimpsed in this photo, taken in Ainola’s library in August 2014.

The Sibelius Pie Chart

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pie2r2
Photo: © Frozen Reeds 2014

Spotted on the streets of Helsinki: poster for the Ateneum Art Museum. ‘28% Finnish sisu [determination] / 17% International voyages of discovery / 22% Interaction with artist colleagues / 13% Melancholy and mythology / 21% National Romanticism / 9% The atmosphere of Ainola’.

www.frozenreeds.com

Bristol Sibelius Cycle Begins

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Sibelius poster 1 bristol

A three-concert cycle of Sibelius symphonies begins at St George’s Bristol on Saturday 20th September 2014 at 7.30 pm. In the opening concert Tom Gauterin conducts the Bristol Classical Players in Symphonies Nos 1, 6 and 7. Tickets: £10–£16. Box Office: 0845 4024001.

The remaining concerts will be on Saturday 24th January 2015 (Symphonies 2 & 3 plus the Violin Concerto, solo: Jennifer Pike) and Sunday 15th March 2015 (Symphonies 4 & 5 plus Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1, solo: Stephen Hough).

Further information here.

tom_gauterin_conducting
Tom Gauterin

Hannu Lintu becomes Visiting Professor at the Sibelius Academy

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Hannu Lintu (photo: © Kaapo Kamu)

Hannu Lintu, chief conductor of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, has been appointed visiting professor at the Sibelius Academy, reports Helsingin Sanomat. He will be responsible for developing the existing collaboration between the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Sibelius Academy Symphony Orchestra through conductors’ and orchestral players’ training. He will also be a visiting teacher on the conductors’ class and will mentor students.

Hannu Lintu became chief conductor of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra in 2013, prior to which he held the positions of artistic director and chief conductor of the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra. He studied cello, piano and then conducting with Jorma Panula at the Sibelius Academy, participated in masterclasses with Myung-Whun Chung at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena, Italy, and took first prize at the Nordic Con­ducting Competition in Bergen in 1994. A wide-ranging discography has received international acclaim, as well as nominations to both the Grammy and the Gramo­phone Awards.

Finland’s Museum Card

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museokortti-prototyyppi

Coming to Finland in 2015 is the Museokortti (‘Museum Card’), a single non-transferrable card that will provide access for a full year to all the country’s museums – including of course Ainola, the Sibelius Museum in Turku and Sibelius’s birth house in Hämeenlinna. The card will cost approx. €50.

Further information (in Finnish) here