Author: avantiadmin

Sat 16.1.2016 at 8 pm
Kölner Philharmonie

HumppAvanti!
Matti Salminen, vocal
M.A. Numminen, vocals and speaker

The merriest orchestra of them Finnish ones takes a trip to Cologne, featuring the notable Matti Salminen and M.A. Numminen! Concert is organized by the Kölner Philharmonie.

http://en.koelner-philharmonie.de/

 

Alexander Theatre
Nov, 12 at 19.00
Nov, 14 at 19.00
Nov, 15 at 16.00

Avanti! chamber orchestra
Juha Siltanen, script & stage direction
Leena Nuora, actress
Jaana Pesonen, actress
Mervi Takatalo, actress
Janne Nisonen, conductor
Monica Groop, mezzo-soprano
Jouko Laivuori, piano

Kaisa Salmi, lighting and stage design
Tuomas Lampinen, costume design
Juhani Liimatainen, sound design

SHH! or being divine is a tragicomic spectacle about people and the “God” in the next room – a gently ironic portrait of Finland’s official genius.

And oh how Finnish he was, our Jean Sibelius: full of self-admiration and self-contempt, a premonition of death and omnipotence, sociability and an abnormal fear of people, always in crisis, always invulnerable, forever the repentant sinner yet in his own mind always “divine”. And modern, too – a bit like the nerd who escapes from reality, the lord of a fantasy world.

Jean Sibelius, aka Sibba, is also very much present in this the 150th year since his birth. Or has he really ventured to come along in person? And how did others feel about living in a house in which something mysteriously unique was always going on in one of the rooms? Three women in a portrait frame tiptoe silently, shhh, shhhh, through the room, laying the table, swatting at a fly, waiting for Something. Shadowing them, like ghosts, are many Avanti! combinations, in strains both foreseen and unforeseen.

Tickets 30€/20€ www.lippupalvelu.fi

Thu 28.1.2016 at 20:00
Dansehallerne, Store Scene

Chamber Orchestra Avanti!
La Chambre aux échos
Aleksi Barrière, director
Clément Mao-Takacs, conductor

Kaija Saariaho: “La Passion de Simone”

Chamber Orchestra Avanti! and the French La Chambre aux échos perform a new chamber version of Kaija Saariaho’s “La Passion de Simone” oratorio in the opening concert of the NJORD Festival. This will be the first performance of the work in Denmark and the premiere of the new version. It will also mark Avant’s first performance in Denmark.

Kaija Saariaho will be a guest composer at the first NJORD Biennale.

 

Fri 29.1.2016 at 20:00
Dansehallerne, Store Scene

Chamber Orchestra Avanti!
Jakob Kullberg, cello
Clément Mao-Takacs, conductor

“LYSET, MØRKET OG FARVERNE”
Niilo Tarnanen: Suspension (2013)
Kaija Saariaho: Notes on Light (2006)
Hans Peter Stubbe Teglbjaerg: Stringed Spaces II (2016)
Kaija Saariaho: Arc (1986)

Friday evening’s concert will feature Danish cellist Jakob Kullberg as Avant’s soloist. In addition to Saariaho’s works, the programme includes Niilo Tarnanen’s Schwabe and the premiere of a work composed for this concert by the Danish composer Hans Peter Stubbe Teglbjaerg.

http://www.njordbiennale.com/da/

Sat 16.1.2016 at 20:00
Kölner Philharmonie

HumppAvanti!
Matti Salminen, vocals
M.A. Numminen, vocals and accompaniment

The happiest orchestra in the world visits Cologne, with bass Matti Salminen and the multi-artistic ambassador of Finnish culture M.A. Numminen as soloists!

http://en.koelner-philharmonie.de/

 

Thu 12. and Sat 14.11. at 19:00, Sun 15.11. at 16:00
Alexander Theatre

Chamber Orchestra Avanti!
Juha Siltanen, script and direction
Jean Sibelius, music
Janne Nisonen, conductor
Monica Groop, vocals
Jouko Laivuori, piano
Leena Nuora, actress
Jaana Pesonen, actress
Mervi Takatalo, actress

Kaisa Salmi, lighting and set design
Tuomas Lampinen, costume design
Juhani Liimatainen, sound design

 

“Schh!” is a comic and tragic musical and dramatic work about humans and the “God” who creates in the next room – a tenderly ironic portrait of Jean Sibelius in 1927 and a high-water mark of egotism. Against his will and too early, in human terms, Sibelius became a symbol of Finland, but he really is Finnish: an egomaniac who fears nothingness to the point of death, for whom childish self-absorption is as natural as self-loathing, filled for almost a hundred years with both the incessant anticipation of death and rapture, sociability and human fear, always in crisis and always invulnerable, as incoherent as he is heavily present, a sinner forever repenting, always defining himself as “wonderful”.

Was it only fantasy that kept his persona in the joints? Sibba, an icon of Finnish creativity, is a strangely modern figure – a bit like a cyber-man escaping reality, king of the imaginary world, his mind present everywhere but never stuck. And that’s who we should all be now, creative dynamos and exports.

Even on his 150th anniversary, Sibelius is everywhere – to the point of exhaustion – as he was, according to the stories, in his own home: as if he were God, he must be taken into account at all times, things must happen on his terms, even if no one can be quite sure what he wants or whether he is even genuinely there. At the end of the festive season, the Avanti! orchestra does the master a favour, letting him slip away from his own portrait, back into hiding. We won’t bother him on stage.

But how does it feel to live in a house where something mysterious and unprecedented happens in one room, silently, for decades? At the edge of the spheres of music and silence, life, in all its “banality”, tries to go on. In place of the protagonist, three women move about without a murmur, setting the table, scaring the fly from buzzing and waiting for something, a bit like Samuel Beckett’s famous vagabonds in Godot. They are accompanied, as discreetly as possible, by the many ensembles of the Avanti! orchestra, playing the expected and the unexpected.

Composer Magnus Lindberg, by the way, once said it was embarrassing that dramas about composers never show what the composer does most of the time, composing, and added: “understandably so, because composing doesn’t look like anything.” The composer’s portrait this time is also a comment on this: it is a stage poem about absence, about what a “creative person” looks like “from the outside”. Let everyone learn a lesson.

“Now get it through your head that you – Ego – are a genius!” (Jean Sibelius in his youthful diary)

 

Duration of the performance approx. 2h, including intermission.

Tickets: €30 / €20, www.lippupalvelu.fi

 

MUSIC CHART – Compositions by Jean Sibelius

I SHOW

Capriccietto

Adagio d

“Ljunga Virginia”, part 2

“Ett ensamt skidspår”

Stage music “Ödlan”, scene 2

“La pompeuse marche d’Asis”

II THURSDAY

Drama music “Death”, part 1, Tempo di valse lente

Adagio “To my beloved Aino”

Drama music “Pelléas and Mélisande”, part 6, “De trenne blinda systrar”

Stage music “Storm”, part 23, “Rainbow” (soundtrack)

Stage music “Death”, part 5, Moderato

Capriccietto (Magnus Lindberg’s arrangement for small orchestra)

“sound forest” (sound track)

Andantino D “Till Emma-Kristina Marie-Louise Berndtson – Lulu”