60°10’13.0″N 25°00’44.0″E

18.6.2026 | Kruunuvuorenranta, Helsinki

 

Programme

Around the Tanker – Jari Koho
10, 11, 12 – Taku Sugimoto
Alexandrins pour Guitare – Tom Johnson
Instrument and Voice – Peter Ablinger
untitled – Michal Pisaro Liu

 

Performers

Helena Marianna Holm
Simone Spampinato
Mark Reid Bulatović
Andrea Mancianti
Jaakko Kuikka
Melik Turunen
Jari Koho

 

And so, just before the summer solstice the concert series has popped its cherry with an ambitious programme in a novel location! The concert, which was unnamed – or rather named simply with the co-ordinates at which it happened – begins with a scattered constellation of way markers guiding the audience to the top on Kruunuvuorenranta, at which is located the old oil tanker accompanied by a terrific view of the Helsinki skyline. 

A fairly decent sized audience assembles and Jari Koho begins their participatory piece (which I have dubbed “Around the Tanker” in the programme). We split into two groups and make three or so rounds of the tanker, first thinking and listening, then imitating sound with our mouths and finally, interacting with the environment – tapping on a metal bench, tossing pebbles into the large puddles forming a moat around the tanker, and thumping on the resonant tanker itself. 

Helena Holm appears from the brush and we follow her to the second performance area – a naturally occurring amphitheatre of sorts, four music stands are positioned anterior to the ensemble, who have been waiting in the sun draped in summer garb; sunnies, baseball caps and T-shirts. 

After introducing the ensemble, the audience clap – immediately after, Taku Sugimoto’s clapping piece 10,11,12 begins at the vigorous baton of Melik Turunen. The piece is long, but is built like a cannon so interlocks repetitively. At times, almost grooves, slipping in and out of recognisability. It’s still a hot day.  

Following are Tom Johnson’s Alexandrins pour Guitare, a special work that is conceived on poetical forms yet includes no specified text, rendering the poetic and meaningful content to be interpolated by the interpreters. In this case it’s Tuomas Anhava’s excellent translations of ancient Japanese Tanka poetry. The texts are as opaque as the music, allowing space to ponder if there is any connection at all. Mark Reid Bulatović is playing the spooky guitar part, whilst Turunen interjects with the poems.

Indeed, this connection between music and text is very much the central point of much of the programme; the late Peter Ablinger’s Instrument and Voice examines the instructor / describer relationship; one note, one instruction how to change that note. Complexity is found through the slow modification of parameters (longer/shorter, then additionally louder/softer and so on) as well as the decision to perform the piece with a different instrument in each section.

The final and largest work on the programme is Michael Pisaro Liu’s untitled for narrator and trio. Similarly to the Ablinger and the Johnson before it, the piece is structured in a similar way; a word, a sound etc. This, with a few stretches of “silence”, in which the ensemble sat as audience to the ambient soundscape of that Laajasalo cliff. Lasting approximately 45”00’ the piece is a bit of an endurance test in this terrain, for audience and performer alike. However, the sounds of Jaakko Kuikka’s shakuhachi paired with the Jari Koho’s synth and Simone Spampinato’s violin are both displaced and rooted to this place, a curious counter melody to the speedboats and wind. 

Additionally, Andrea Mancianti has brought his electric guitar (posing as a vibraphone) up the hill and Turunen wields the Wandelweisser trademark; the melodica. Fitting in well is Holm’s consort of recorders, which seem to awaken ever more seagulls to this gentle-hillside-shindig. 

– Or maybe they’ve simply clocked the refreshments… 

It seems that the Pisaro conjured more than gulls; I noticed a flurry of butterflies gathering between the threshold of the performance area and audience, as if listening. A foil to this intimate scene was also the gathering of stronger wind and brewing cloud. The mostly motionless players and listeners are getting chilled in equal portion. Naturally, some left early, whether it be the cause of the weather, or the irritable tugs on sleeves by their children. It’s all good, in the end this is quite an extreme programme, and still and quiet type of extremeness.

As the event ends, hugs are exchanged, thoughts and impressions exhumed and kilju drank. I walk home across kruunuvuoren silta, all energy exorcised out of me from having spent the day on the windy cliff next to the oil tanker. 

All in all, a successful first sally for mp concert series, we intend to do more concerts this summer, and certainly throughout the year – though we may venture indoors as even beneath the midnight sun, the cold is always knocking in Finland. Let’s see how it goes.