 Get your own copy for 12€ (plus mailing) | JUHO LAITINEN: CELLO, VOICE AND SAMPLER TULK001 1 Giacinto Scelsi: Maknongan (1980) 3:35 2 Improvisation (with Kari Heinilä, flute) 0:42 3–8 Usko Meriläinen: Arabesques for solo cello (1964) 14:32  9 Improvisation (with Mikko Hassinen, tombak) 1:06 10 Keeril Makan: Zones d’accord (2001) 7:04 11 Improvisation (with Seppo Kantonen, piano) 1:42 12 Betsy Jolas: Épisode cinquième (1983) 7:10 13 Improvisation (with Kari Heinilä, flute) 1:03 14 Jan-Bas Bollen: Etude 4 “Unstable, artificial” (1992) 11:15 15 Improvisation (with Seppo Kantonen, synthetisator) 1:23 16–27 Øyvind Torvund: Stacks (2007/2009) 9:00 Please note that tracks 10 and 14 contain a wide dynamic range Recorded at Konserttihovi, Imatra and Kallio-Kuninkala, Järvenpää by Mikko Hassinen Edited and mixed by Mikko Hassinen | Produced by Juho Laitinen Made possible with support from Arts Council of Finland www.tulkinnanvaraista.fi |
| Notes to this recording In my work as a performer, curator, teacher, and writer I've become increasingly interested in an act of sharing. The are many equally important processes going on at the same time. The new music performer seeks music that is new to him (regardless of the time when it was composed), works diligently on it and presents it to the community that he invites (or did they invite him?) to take part in his creative process. A concert, or a book, or a cd is not an end product but rather a coming-together of different paths on an ongoing journey in art. At hand is my first solo cd, and I am grateful for all the financial and moral support I've received during the making of it. Most of the works presented haven't been recorded before, at least not in this form. I start with a recent favourite, Giacinto Scelsi's (1905–1988) Maknongan for a bass instrument. (Is the cello bassy enough? I think so.) The composer and I share an interest in heterophony, and I decided to attempt a version both played and sung. Scelsi's inspiration came at least in part from Tibetan chant, mine from being exposed to Classical Turkish music through Kari Heinilä, the flutist featured on this cd. I wanted to juxtapose the six composed solo works presented here with short duo improvisations with musicians that I've worked a lot with lately. Improvising for me is the newest possible music. In my approach it is more or less antithetical to composition and cannot be made to follow set structures or moods. It allows for a radical emotional openness that for the most part cannot be present in other musics. Although I admit that a choice of instrumentation and the fact that the pieces are short reflect compositional choices, I still feel that these little pieces are rather free in spirit. I include some bonus tracks that you get access to by scrolling down the page. Usko Meriläinen (1930–2004) was a one of the first to use dodecaphonic techniques in Finland but also one to give them up for what he called "character technique": an intuitive focusing on points, fields and lines, inspired by abstract painting. Little by little I seem to be drawn to playing all of his cello repertoire, and a while back I discovered the early Arabesques that, surprisingly, hadn't been performed in public before – presumably because they're difficult to play but also because so much music of the 60's in general has fallen into oblivion. Many repertoire choices emerge from happy coincidences. I met the American composer Keeril Makan (b. 1972) in Helsinki and was summoned to play Zones d'accord at the Viitasaari Time of Music festival. The piece, originally conceived to accompany a dance performance, is in three parts that compass a dramatic curve from utmost concentration and restrain to a full-on outburst of expression. The composer calls these zones "fragile", "animated" and "distorted". Keeril's piece makes nice use of an exaggerated bow pressure, various natural harmonics as well as a massive tuning-down of the lowest string that changes the colour of the whole instrument. In the summer of 2007 I attended, on a whim, a composition seminar at Académie musicale de Villecroze where the French–American composer Betsy Jolas (b. 1926) was teaching. In addition to performing her large-scale music theatre work L'ascension du Mont Ventoux I studied her fifth Épisode and played it for her. This piece has since become another favourite of mine. It's lyrical sensibility mixes with a dialogue between voices, these to me appearing to be operatic in an almost Mozartian manner! Typical in Jolas' writing is the use of unsymmetrical rhythms, without divisions into strong and weak beats. Competitions are rarely fun, but encountering Jan-Bas Bollen's music was one of the pleasant outcomes of my participation in the Gaudeamus competition in 2007. I got a chance to browse through a lot of Dutch music, and the Etude has stayed in my repertoire since. It is a quirky one, probably more a study of the composer's interests than an exercise for the cellist. It's curiosities include a graphically marked vibrato, lurching rhythms that have a lot of swinging momentum nevertheless – and the song of a New Zealand grey warbler. And finally, Stacks by the Norwegian Øyvind Torvund: a set of twelve short pieces for a whistling cellist and prerecorded samples triggered from a Max/MSP patch. Torvund is concerned with what he calls "para-music": aural phenomena that wouldn't necessarily be called musical in a conventional sense. The work can be presented with 12 paintings by the Canadian artist Marc Bell, and with his permission, I include the title picture:  Bonus tracks Mikko Hassinen, tombak & electronics Kari Heinilä, flutes Seppo Kantonen, piano & V-Synth Juho Laitinen, cello & voice Improvisation 1 Improvisation 2 Improvisation 3 |