LIGHT IN THE LIGHT - AVANT-GARDE 2025
Avantin 40. The summer festival will be held in Porvoo 25.- 29.6.2025
Avant Chamber Orchestra’s 2025 Summer Sonata was designed by composer Sebastian Fagerlund. The programme is typically varied, with music ranging from classical to jazz and from monologue opera to orchestral concerts.
“This year’s theme “Light in the Light” refers to the abstract idea of music, communication and emotions as light that travels through the centuries, returning in different forms as it renews, changes and branches.
In addition to my own music, I have chosen compositions by Ravel, Shaw, Messiaen, Bjarnason, Lutosławski and Tarkiainen, among others. The works create fruitful dialogues and meanings between them, in which the intellectual and emotional, joy and sorrow, inner and outer worlds meet and intermingle in different ways.”
-Sebastian Fagerlund
Opening day programme in Porvoo's Old Town and at the Art Factory
Cadenza, composed by Fagerlund, will serve as the opening fanfare for the Suvisoito and will ring out on Wednesday 25.6.2025 at 12 noon, as usual, in the heart of Porvoo’s Old Town, in front of the Town Hall.
The Avant Garde Summer Play celebrates its 40th anniversary. The opening concert on Wednesday 25 June at 19:00 will start with Kaija Saariaho’s Forty Heartbeats, which was premiered at the 1998 Suvisoito. The work is dedicated to Esa-Pekka Salonen and Magnus Lindberg in honour of their 40th birthdays. The solo number is Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, played by Dutch singer Liza Ferschtman. After the intermission, the programme includes Polar Pearls by Outi Tarkiainen (2023) and Chamber Symphony by Sebastian Fagerlund (2021). The opening concert at the Porvoo Art Factory will be conducted by conductor John Storgårds.
Suvisoitto works together
Some of the events of the Avant Garde Summer Festival are carried out as collaborative projects. Kaija Saariaho’s monologue opera Émilie (2009/2013) is a co-production of Kokonainen ry, Dialogia! festival ry and Avant Chamber Orchestra. The work, which will have two performances at Suvisoito, is directed by Aleksi Barrière and conducted by Aliisa Neige Barrière.
The collaboration with the Porvoo Jazz Festival, which started in 2024, will continue. The Friday evening of the Summer Festival will be celebrated with two concerts in the atmospheric Porvoo Cathedral at 19 and 20.30. The first concert will feature Avant’s musicians, and the evening will end with a guest concert by Porvoo Jazz’s Mika Kallio Gong Odyssey. The autumn Porvoo Jazz festival will again feature a return concert by Avant.
The main venue for the summer concert will be Porvoo’s Art Factory, which Avanti once took over as a concert venue. From 2025, Avanti will be one of the cultural partners of the City of Porvoo.
Concerts and debates
In addition to music, the Summer Music Festival programme will include discussion sessions. The daily “Tune-up” is a moment to stop, tune in and think out loud before the evening’s concerts. Artists, creators and partners of Suvisoito will be among the panellists.
In addition to music, the Summer Music Festival programme will include discussion sessions. The daily “Tune-up” is a moment to stop, tune in and think out loud before the evening’s concerts. Artists, creators and partners of Suvisoito will be among the panellists.
On Friday 27.6. at 16:00 at the Porvoo Main Library, Sixten Korkman, Saku Mantere and Anu Koivunen will discuss humanism inspired by the festival’s theme “Light in the Light”. A greeting from the Porvoo Music School and the Avant String Quartet will set the mood for the discussion.
The final day of the festival will feature the final concert of the Composition Workshop Masterclass, with a panel discussion on composition.
Children and families have always been part of the audience at the Summer Festival. A storytelling concert for the whole family with the recorder quartet Bravade will be presented on Saturday 28 June at 17.00. The concert is bilingual and can be followed in both Finnish and Swedish. The Saturday evening will end with a relaxed and atmospheric Avanti! club.
The Summer 2025 Festival will end on Sunday 29.6. at 18:00 with a concert conducted by John Storgårds. The evening’s programme includes Birds of Paradise by Swedish composer Andrea Tarrod and Maurice Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couper, dedicated to his friends who died in the First World War. The concert will also feature Witold Lutosławski’s multi-dimensional Jeux vénitiens and the climax, Sebastian Fagerlund’s Clarinet Concerto (2006), with Christoffer Sundqvist, the opening soloist.
