The TAKAKENO festival can be surmised by acknowledging the synthesis of the new with the ancient: Using archaic instruments as a starting point for something cutting edge. It’s become somewhat of a trope in new music circles recently, and frankly I’m all for it.
This theme is directly borrowed from Detritus duo’s Hittiparit project, pairing an old classic (and I really mean old, literally medieval) with a new commission to respond to it. Initially, the festival was meant simply as an album launch party for a new disc, bafflingly titled “⊆”, although it expanded into a two day virtuosic wind instrument extravaganza.
In a way wind instruments are a great link to exploring the idea of old and new; they are after all, amongst the oldest instruments (besides percussion and voice?). Secondly, they synthesize the breath; shaping and giving character to outflow based on many parameters – is this not synthesis? The temperamental nature of reeds and the materiality of wood also places them in constant negotiation with the space in which they are being played – one can appreciate this in the near constant adjustments the players are making, particularly when playing a more “primitive” instrument like the recorder for example. Yes, the construction might be simple, yet complexity is present in the interchange of breath, temperature, wood and air. The room plays such a role for the recorder that often the instruments are nursed under armpits in an attempt to imbue as much body heat into the wood as possible.
Spit, sweat and breath are also a huge part of wind instruments, intimately placed upon the lips a gentleness is present alongside extreme effort. Leaky, dripping condensation collects on the surface at the same rate that the players produce sweat. And thus they do enact as an outer “organ” extending our biology into some other sphere… Maybe they even make the player into a different being?
In the interest of not dispassionately listing the performances, their qualities and impressions, I will give a whistle stop tour of the highlights (from my perspective) and not at all in order.
Aaro Lehtavaara’s solo performance Q1 began with an interesting premise of priming the audience directly:
“…I’ve been thinking about the stock market, and how a person can lie on their bed and invest in the military industrial complex in their pajamas…”
A cue that tells us the following sound has a solid association. It’s certainly a treacherous move, as we aren’t anymore listening to music per say, but trying to deduce the symbolic meaning. Circumnavigating this opening gambit, Lehtovaara proceeds with a strange composition of gestures; Service bells & bassoon swells that are simply presented, completed and then set aside. It’s effective, as one wonders about the sequence of events (the composition) more than the particular qualities of them. There’s a real maturity in daring to deal with these concepts playfully, and it’s always funnier when the absurd is played straight.
The previous day’s Blowjob performance, of whom Lehtovaara is a member along with Maija Karakoski and Jaakko Uljas, consisted of a far more mysterious and cool condition of music. Already, the fashion choices of the group are strikingly contrary to the typical penguin-like regalia of an orchestral wind section. I feel a sense of the alternative youth of Helsinki today, and this extends beyond the clobber, and into the playing as well; the three musicians stand in formation, each behind a music stand supporting a sparing two sheets of A4. The set is a half-hour of cannon-like melodies looping and rotating more often than not around some tonal centre. At some point there is some reverb introduced, who knows why? The mystery just lures me in deeper.
It’s a beautiful sound. On one end, the deep wood of the bass recorder, on the other, the reedy bassoon and in between the clarinet which blends the texture into one mass – a democratic organ of shared control, a support structure rather than artifact. There is no leader, no solos but a commitment to togetherness – a virtuosity any solitary person could simply not achieve.
I remember being introduced to the subject of modelling synthesis in a class during my bachelor studies – The professor, Larry Goves, demonstrated to us an example of a sound which has can be synthesized with “complete” accuracy, in other words, modelled with a level of precision that mimics the physical world.
To the curious, the sound is of metal ball-bearings being propelled in circles inside a ceramic vessel.
After a long explanation of the technical intricacies needed to achieve this goal, we inevitably asked why? Why spend so much energy on synthesising a sound one can make at home with ease? Professor Goves reminded us that through physical modelling synthesis one can alter parameters so that impossible set ups can be heard; for example, bicycle sized ball bearings in a ceramic bowl the width and shape of Töölölähti. (Obviously he didn’t have the foresight to use this example!)
To this effect, the world’s instrumentarium is full of odd experiments and mutations that excessively enlarge or diminish attributes of musical instruments. Working with the physical, it seems at first to have less potential than the digital. However, I would argue that an oddity one can imagine pales in comparison to that which one may physically grasp.
A perfect case is that of the bass oboe which entered the stage clenched by Lauri Supponen toward the end of the first night of the festival. Apparently it’s the only one in Finland, and a bit of a devil to play.
Supponen is flexing his boboe skills with an offering by Mikko Sarvanne which begins with a gesture that becomes somewhat of an ideé fix across Sarvanne’s own set: circle, then walked away.
We hear from the hallowed Toinen Kerros toilets, a few rasps before a re-entrance lets us see what extreme effort is needed to sound this slender column of grenadila1.
After taking a bow, Savarnne hauls, yet another piece of expensive and bespoke hardware onto the stage; a modular synthesizer. The set is different, but based on syklit jotka puhkeavat2 (self-released, 2026). Samples bounce from one speaker across to the other in a repetitive juggle, that soothes the crowd like hypnosis might. On the whole, the gentle demeanour of the pastel-clad Savarnne, continuously monitoring the sound by eloping then returning to their station feels like a “stimming” session for the sonically inclined – not too loud, not too intrusive neither is it particularly performative nor symbolically charged. Hence the set has an introspective quality, one imagines that as many as there are people in the room, there are processes going on. A fine way to close the first evening.
Surely one of the highlights of the whole festival was Maija Antilla’s fantastically varied bass-clarinet and electronics recital. Featuring two stand-out pieces by Tytti Arola and Þorkell Nordal, that explored the instrument’s capacity from a more biological standpoint.
Following from the sidetrack I opened up earlier, regarding the contortive iteration of wind instruments and modelling synthesizers; could one not also view biological evolution from a similar standpoint? Features get extended, lengthened or diminished dependent on their creaturely habits and dependancies; an elephant grows a long dextrous nose in order to scoop water into its mouth, and similarly a clarinet extends its body to reach those delicious low registers…
– as often with an Arola piece, a simple visual pun is elaborated and played with, with an elegant charm. A screen partitions the audience and performer onto which a crudely animated elephant is projected, throwing with it the silhouette of Antilla (and the bass clarinet). Play ensues, trunk on trunk, as the elephant gallops off screen and Antilla’s shadow hops closer and larger. The audience’s expressions hang like bunting made of smiles, from beginning to end.
Nordal’s work is in a more anthropic mode, i.e. it’s about human biology and particularly about the cosmic un-probability of language. A voice is elongated (beyond physical constraints) into flutters and jitters whose satisfying syncopations make me wonder beyond the cosmic probability of language and into the murky conditions from which music is born. It’s a fantastic process to behold.
The pokerface playing style of Antilla, seems to work across the board from sacharine to serious, her dedication and impressive range lingers in the space long after the ultimate tones’ reverberations have dissipated among the crowd.
So we seem to have sallied quite away from the image of ball bearings in a ceramic pot, but perhaps it could still become a fitting image for Takakeno festival. The name means “lean backwards” or “backwards tilt” or something like that, and it has stayed a mystery to me until the final moments of the second day. This old/new theme suggests a leaning back in time, but more earnestly, it communicates to me a relaxed and chill demeanor of this particular niche of musicians.
…Digressions aside, the festival draws to a close. No sooner does the clapping stop than Kaisamaija instigates a limbo competition.
“Aha,” I think, “now, it is time to lean back.”
- African wood typically used in the construction of oboes. ↩︎
- Meaning “cycles that blossom” in English. ↩︎
takakeno-festivaali [-festivaali]
10-11.6.2026 | Toinen Kerros, Helsinki
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