Summer Concert Series envelops Porvoo 

Avanti! is this year greatly multiplying its musical offering in Porvoo with a series of summer concerts in addition to its familiar Summer Sounds festival. This unique concert series will be enveloping the whole town and spreading out into its nearby villages for chamber recitals performed by small ensembles. Summer Sounds tickets will go on sale at 12 noon on Friday May 21, when it will also be possible to book seats for the free concerts. 

Players to plan summer concert programmes 

Avanti! is this year putting on a unique series of free concerts spread across the town, at manor houses and concert halls and in town squares. Avanti!’s Artistic Director Kari Kriikku promises programmes that are fun, serious, absurd and surprising, each in its planners’ own image. “The keen Avanti! guys have been the driving force behind these concerts. We’re so thrilled to have found such impressive venues for the concerts with the help of our friends in Porvoo.” 

The series begins in the first week of June at Bosgård Manor, where promising young Bengi Canatan will be conjuring magical timbres from the harp. The next concert, at the Villa Albert, will be testing the limits of the accordion in the hands of Veli Kujala with the Avanti! Quartet. Finland’s local council elections will also be noted with music on polling day (June 13) as the Duo Matalata welcome voters on tuba and bass clarinet near a couple of polling stations. Also scheduled for June are some French Baroque, and music from the Middle Ages to the present day on various instrumental line-ups. 

After the festival, in July, early Baroque hits will be paired with premieres of works by young Finnish composers in Näsimäki Chapel. The programme for July and August will further feature a selection of concerts each creating a world of its own. The summer concert series will culminate at the end of August with a Disklavier spectacle full of surprises.