Maisema ja Improvisages

Wintry scenery, Lake Keitele. - Improvisages met again. We talked about the coming concerts and other happenings. There's going to be some music performed with a choir, some music with a drummer and then some with other musicians plus of course with paintings... and  photos.  Dates are more or less set  but  what we do in every occasion is not so clear. But that is not so important - we are going to improvise!  And today after planning and discussing  we improvised some music. Very nice!! Juha H.)

Roskis Tallinnassa

Above a trashcan from Tallinn. The text tells that anything that can't be used as a rhythm instrunment can be put  here. - Concerts were great.  Especially I liked the organ music - Bach and Liszt.  Toomas Trass performed the music quite superbly! Moya Brennan was good, too.  (Juha H.)

Improvisages ennen

Improvisages rehearsing some twenty years ago.  And the computer was called Atari.  At that time Sini took the above  photo. Today Sini and I've photographed more than 400 photo slides and thus turned them digital. We're in the middle of a quite massive project... (Juha H.)

Sini, Maija P, Veikko-Kalevi ja Improvisages

Above poster for a forthcoming gig - songs, poems, music and photos. Improvisages with some added features. (Juha H.)

Keikalle

All was packed to go gigging... And the Very Nais Quintet and FWD a.k.a. Gospel Sisters and Brothers concert itself was quite ok. (Juha H. Photo; Sini)

Kaustinen ja Pasuunapelimannit

Pasuunapelimannit warming up before their first gig at Kaustinen Folk Music Festival 2009. (Juha H.; photo:Miikka)

Musaa ja kuvia

Nothing much. Most of the evening I just kept on blowing - flute and clarinet. Later after sauna there may be some time for domra pickin'.

Earlier today I added some photos here - pics from Winter Solstice 2007 to May 2008. In the beginning there are quite many hues of white and blue. Later all gets so blue and green.

Juha H.

Sunnuntain retki

While trekking today. - Rest of the day I just kept on writing, playing and recording music. (Juha H.)

Machine Men as a sort of Folk Group...

Machine Men with their roadies visited - and lingered... with - us tonight. The pic above - all of them playing some sort of Folk Music... It must be true... (Juha H.)

Kuvia, kuvia

All evening I worked with a picture sequence to be performed with some recitation of poetry. Maybe I'll play some recorder, too.

Earlier this evening Eeva-Liisa and Jouko T. visited. We rehearsed some songs to be performed later, later.

And now I'm very tired...

Juha H.

Mike Stern, Jazz Kamikaze ja KeiteleJazz

KeiteleJazz 2007 is over. Last and greatest performing act was Mike Stern with his band. (The first photo above) Wonderful! Also young musicians of Jazz Kamikaze played well and energetically. (Juha H.)

Improvisages ja Tallinna

Improvisages - Jori and I - had a nice jam of three, four hours today. No sheet music or anything much planned in advance - improvising, improvising! Jori had with him a weird gadget into which he had programmed four chords - C7, F7, G7 and Bb7 - to trigger some soft-synths on his laptop. Nothing else preconcieved! Improvising comes so naturally and easily. That's what I like.

While Improvisages were jamming Sini added here some photos of our journey to Tallinn, Estonia.

Juha H.

Kaustinen ja Planeetat

Finally I had the time to choose and fix some photos from the journey of Pasunapelimannit to Kaustinen Folk Music Festival. Most of the photos were taken by Toropainen and Miika - I had something else to do... And as an added bonus there is a video by Toropainen - The Big Mandolin Orchestra - more than a hundred musicians - conducted by Heikki Lahti performing Mandoliinien esiinmarssi (= Come Forth Mandolins!). - Oh, photos can be found here.

J-V visited and played a couple of guitar solos to my composition Planeetat (=Planets) which is composed around a poem written by Edith Sodergran. Nice solos, J-V - thank you very much!

Juha H.

Ilta sataa

Rain all day long. But that's ok - after the Mediterranean heat.

Most of the day I stayed inside and just played different instruments - flute, recorders, saxes and - of course - domra. This is the way I see what is FUN... And so it happens - I wrote down on paper some music, too.

Finally - it took some hours - I had the time to send some photos here. Pics from Hania, Crete.

Today Jopo moved to Jyvaskyla. Luckily it's only some 40 kilometers from here. Now both my sons live in the same city.

Juha H.

Ozzy

Back from Helsinki. Above a photo taken with mobile camera and quite far away - so it's not a quality take. Ozzy Osbourne performing with his band at the Hartwall Arena, Helsinki. Audience - some 12000 people. Ozzy sounded pretty good - though he's not any great singer. (But in Ozzy's case that's not the most important thing...) The whole was very enjoyable and somewhat funny! During the 30-plus years of his career he's created many memorable and meaningful songs. And there was some charisma added with a good band... The supporting act was Black Label Society. Zack Wylde is quite a virtuoso guitarist. Unfortunately the band wasn't mixed well enough, the way they deserved. That's how it goes in the Rock'n'Roll world. Supporting acts MUST sound bad so that the main band won't suffer. This is simply stupid... Luckily Zack Wylde played also with Ozzy and could show his talents with better sounds. (Juha H.)

Ilta saa

The most horrendous days of winter are over, I hope. At the moment the temperature outside is merely -6 Celcius degrees. And that's almost nothing...

J-V visited and played a guitar solo to my composition Varjo elaa (=The Shadow lives). I mixed the whole and bounced it to HardDisk. Sort of sad folk-jazz. Music sounds fine.

Later in the evening I added some photos here.

Juha H.

Hoikkaset

Ensemble Hoikkaset played a gig for local veterans of the II WW. Mostly Christmas carols. And good food, of course. Nice, relaxed and easy.

In the evening some photo manipulating. And playing domra, of course.

Juha H.