"Finnish musicians like to repeat things. It goes on and on... Sometimes for too long."
For the April 2011 issue of The Wire magazine, I got out of control about music with Shinji Kanki, a Japanese-Finnish composer and my former sound art teacher, as well as other local practitioners, with a mission to unravel Finland's orderly art music scene. The 'Global Ear Helsinki' piece discusses methods such as unorthodox musical education; encouraging students not to listen too much while they're playing, interpreting roof tiles as a score, and trying to only produce sound when no one else is. However, it also endorses the beauty of tedium:
"The best thing about the new music scene is that you can't always be sure when the concert started, or if it already started or not."
See also: Yé Yé, our Helsinki night of musical visions. Photo: The Art of War by Shinji Kanki.
