Things to Do – Breathe

The song cycle Canaille, completed in 2025, will receive its world premiere performed by tenor Tuomas Miettola and pianist Collin Hansen in this concert.

Tenor Tuomas Miettola and composer Paavo Korpijaakko met while Miettola was performing in Korpijaakko’s opera People in a Summer Night in Hämeenkyrö in the summer of 2023. At that time, the idea began to emerge of creating a song cycle written specifically for Tuomas’s voice. From the outset, Tuomas envisioned pairing it with Aulis Sallinen’s magnificent but rarely performed Windy Winter in Provence. As a result, the theme of Korpijaakko’s song cycle developed around the emergence of hope and recovery from grief.

The text of Sallinen’s work, written by Paavo Haavikko, portrays the overwhelming sorrow of a person who has lost someone close. For Korpijaakko’s companion cycle, Miettola asked singer and lyricist Jeni Packalen to write texts depicting a person gradually recovering from grief—reaching toward life again and beginning to perceive faint traces of light and color.

Packalen’s text draws carefully chosen imagery from both surrounding nature and an urban bar setting. The atmosphere of the poems and the music is incredulous, foggy, rough-edged, bold, restless, eruptive, hesitant, sparse, and uncertain—much like the mind of a person who has experienced profound loss. Read Paavo Korpijaakko’s thoughts on composing: Canaille, the composer’s reflections

Concert Program

• Aulis Sallinen: Windy Winter in Provence
• Roger Quilter: Three Shakespeare Songs
• Paavo Korpijaakko: Canaille

The concert will take place at Järvikylä Manor. Doors open approximately half an hour before the performance. The total duration is about 1.5 hours, including an intermission. Coffee will be served during the interval in the Väentupa hall. Seating is also available in the manor garden.

The event is supported by Arokivi Oy and Joroisten apteekki.

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