"Kantele-GO!" introduces new kantele music to Russian and Finnish audiences

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concerts poster

From October 7 to October 13, 2019 musicians from Finland and the Republic of Karelia, Russia, will give the series of concerts in the cities of Petrozavodsk,  Joensuu,  Ilomantsi and Lieksa.   The concert tour will become a result of the Kantele Music Lab, a creative workshop for Russian and Finnish musicians arranged in Petrozavodsk in order to develop a brand new kantele concert program combining traditional and contemporary styles and performing techniques.

A Music Lab is a new form of cross-border cooperation between musicians from Finland and the Republic of Karelia within the Kantele-GO! project. The main task of the music laboratory is to create a new kantele concert program through joint performance and improvising within a time-limited international workshop. Comparing to the master courses held in June 2019 in the city of Kuhmo, this time Russian kantele performers are not being taught by their Finnish colleagues but are becoming inventors of their music. Creation of a new kantele concert program will be supervised by Hanna Ryynänen and Minna Raskinen, the experienced kantele performers and teachers from Finland, and Vyacheslav Ivanov, the art-director of the  Kantele-GO! project and the Karelian National Song and Dance Ensemble “Kantele”.

As per the project manager Olga Vlasova, the deputy director of the Karelian National Song and Dance Ensemble “Kantele”, the new kantele concert program presented to Russian and Finnish audiences in October 2019 will be a total surprise.  It will contain solo pieces and ensemble music performed on kanteles of different types and other musical instruments including the human voice.

The new kantele program will be presented in Petrozavodsk, Kondopoga, Sortavala and Finnish cities of Joensuu at the Joensuun konservatorio on October 11, 2019 at 7 p.m., in Ilomantsi at the Kalevala-Sali of the Ilomantsin kunnantalon on October 12, 2019 at 5 p.m., and in Lieksa at the Erkki Eskelinen sali on October 13, 2019 at 2 p.m. In addition, the participants of the project will give a master class on chromatic and diatonic kantele performing at the Joensuun konservatorio on Ocotber 11, 2019.

The Kantele –GO! project is supported by the Karelia CBC program https://www.kareliacbc.fi  financed by the European Union, the Republic of Finland and the Russian Federation.