The last notes of the Avant Garde Summer Festival 2019 played on Sunday evening, when Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony closed the great festival. Designed by Swiss conductor Baldur Brönnimann, the festival featured fourteen concerts, large and small, in Pernaja and Porvoo. The concerts were attended by a large number of music lovers: this year’s Suvisoitto attracted around 2 500 listeners.
Avantin 34. Music from the 16th century to the present day was performed by the festival’s international guests Wu Wei (sheng) and Jennifer Koh (violin), as well as by soprano cellist Piia Koms, folk artist Maija Kauhanen, tenor Taavi Oramo and the wonderful musicians of Avant. On Saturday evening, the atmosphere in the Avanti Hall was set off by bass Matti Salminen and artistic multi-talent M.A. Numminen. Concerts were held in the medieval stone church of Pernaja, in the Avanti Hall of the Art Factory, in Porvoo’s cafés, at Borgå Gymnasium and around the Town Hall Square.
The summer concert was seen and heard in the media
The festival was featured in numerous media outlets in the Eastern Uusimaa region. Uusimaa magazine gave a spectacular coverage of the whole festival week. Helsingin Sanomat noted Wu Wei’s Finnish premiere of Jukka Tiensuu’s work Teoton at the festival’s opening concert on Thursday. “Wu Wei is a truly charismatic soloist,” Helsingin Sanomat wrote of the wonderful opening concert. The concert will be recorded by YLE: Yle Arena will be broadcasting the concert until the end of July, with interviews with conductor Baldur Brönnimann, sheng artist Wu Wei and composer Jukka Tiensuu.
Avant’s Summer Play will be back in 2020
The artistic content of the upcoming festival will be created by HK Gruber, an Austrian conductor, composer, singer, double bassist and now also the artistic director of the 2020 Avant Garde Summer Festival.
HK Gruber will be familiar to Avant fans from last autumn’s Frankenstein concert, where he was not only the composer but also the singer and conductor. HK Gruber studied composition at the Vienna University of Music and Performing Arts and has played double bass with the Austrian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Gruber is also a singer-actor and founding member of the MOB-art & tone-ART artist collective. HK Gruber is also an internationally renowned and acclaimed composer.
A warm thank you on behalf of Avant! We hope you will join us again next summer!
Photos by Heikki Tuuli
