Double Concerto premiere to be postponed

The planned premiere of Sampo Haapamäki's double concerto Conception is to be postponed for the next season. The wonderful and tremendous new work is a very large scale ultravirtuosic concerto with duration over 30 minutes and we simply need more time than the originally planned 3 months to survive the premiere. Anyway, I am very much looking forward to finally perform this ingenious work by one of the brightest minds of Finnish contemporary music.

Tour with Quatuor IXI

Today I had at last a chance to play concert with great French string quartet Quatuor IXI. Five years ago we had very nice concerts in Tallinn and Helsinki, and since that I have been waiting for an opportunity to play with these fantastic musicians again. The music of Quatuor IXI is some kind of mixture of contemporary, jazzy, minimalistic and freely improvised stuff and it is almost impossible to notice, which sections are previously composed and which are improvised. We are currently touring Finland and Estonia. Don't miss this wonderful opportunity to hear Quatuor IXI live! The concerts include also parts of my "Hyperchromatic Counterpoint" for quarter tone accordion and tape and we also premiered today my newest composition "MIXI?" written for Quatuor IXI and quarter tone accordion. More info at www.vapaataanet.fi.

Happy New Year 2012

My very exciting spring season started already last Saturday with some Frank Zappa tunes in the Finnish rock club Tavastia. At the moment we are rehearsing with Pipoka and two opera singers a new chamber opera by Markus Fagerudd, the man who wrote the accordion concerto D'n'A I have been performing quite a few times around the world. The premiere of the opera Una espera inesperada will be beginning of February. Other highlights for the spring season include a new double concerto by "the quarter tone miracle man" Sampo Haapamäki for quarter-tone quitar and quarter-tone accordion, which I will perform together with my long-time colleaque Jarmo Julkunen and the Tapiola Sinfonietta conducted by Stefan Asbury  in the end of March. In the end of April I will travel for the first time to New York to play my New York debut recital organised by Finlandia Foundation Metropolitan Chapter in the Scandinavia House.

First performance in the Cathedral of Berlin

On Saturday the 11th of June Susanne Kujala will play a first performance of my new organ composition Gentle Flow of Peace. The composition is very peaceful and ambient in character and is based on 4-part harmony played on double pedal. Susanne Kujala's performance includes also my elder work Triptychos as well as Max Reger's Introduktion und Passacaglia d-Moll. The next performance of my new work will be heard in the Lutherkirche of Solingen on 18th of June.