Lotta Wennäkoski in charge of the programme for Summer Sounds 2017

Composer Lotta Wennäkoski will be planning the program for 32nd Avanti Summer Sounds festival, to be organised on 28 June – 2 July 2017. This year’s Summer Sounds Festival, which consisted of fourteen concerts and other events in Porvoo and Pernaja, was attended by an audience of roughly 3 000 people.

Lotta Wennäkoski was the artistic co-ordinator of The Tampere Biennale Festival in 2008–2010 and the composer-in-residence of Tapiola Sinfonietta during the season 2010–2011. Her compositions have been performed widely in Finnish and international concert halls and festivals, including The Helsinki Festival, Musica Nova, Märzmusik Berlin, Warsaw Autumn, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and The Other Minds Festival. She has also composed a number of commissioned works for the likes of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

“I was very flattered and surprised by the invitation to become the artistic co-ordinator of the Summer Sounds. It will be a very exciting opportunity to plan the programme for a festival that delivers chamber and orchestral, classical and contemporary music. What a range of possibilities that opens up!” says Wennäkoski.

Closed on 3 July, this year’s Summer Sounds was curated by Moscow-born Finnish conductor Dima Slobodeniouk. The five-day festival saw fourteen concerts and other events, six of which free, take place around Porvoo and Pernaja. In all, the festival was attended by roughly 3 000 visitors. Like in previous years, a bus service operated between Helsinki and the Art Factory, taking visitors to the festival and back during the festival.

The principal supporters of the Summer Sounds are the City of Porvoo, Aktiasäätiö, Neste, Porvoo Art Factory and the Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland.

Avanti! warmly thanks the festival audience and supporters and wishes all friends of the orchestra a wonderful summer!