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Diary02.02.2010: Welcome Year 2010!In the middle of January we returned from our Christmas vacation to start a new year the best possible way... Read more » 23.12.2009: Merry Christmas! We’ve just finished one of the best Christmas tours ever! This year’s tour was a bit different from the previous ones because it consisted of two parts... Read more » 14.12.2009: Touring in the beautiful winter of the North Our Christmas tour in Finland has been a great success so far! :o) We're all really inspired by singing in churches... Read more » 08.11.2009: Kuopio rocks! Dear Diary, once again it's autumn in Finland, which for Rajaton usually means releasing a new album and getting ready for the Christmas tour... Read more » 11.10.2009: Everyday work and sunny autumn days Hello everybody! There hasn't been anything special happening in our lives lately... or on the other hand, it is actually quite special for us to spend a longer period at a time in our hometown of Helsinki and have the time for rehearsing in peace... Read more » 16.09.2009: The Beatles, Queen, Abba ...and more The Beatles, Queen, Abba ...and more It was already ninth year in a row that we kicked off the autumn with the good company of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra. This time we were reminiscing the past years with three Best of concerts. These joint concerts have always attracted a huge amount of people to the beautiful Sibelius Hall of Lahti. Also this year all the three concerts were sold out and the free tickets for the dress rehearsal were given away in a flash. It is always great to perform to such an enthusiastic audience Read more » 22.08.2009: VanDusen and sushi! And so met the happy holidayers at the reshaped Helsinki-Vantaa airport and took off for Pacific Canada. Our traditional August "world tour" shrinked to a return ticket to Vancouver as the Japanese festival was cancelled. Fortunately Vancouver always has a lot to offer: stunningly beautiful mountains in the horizon, Stanley Park, an insane number of sushi restaurants, excellent opportunities to renew one's garderobe, and the marvellous VanDusen garden for a concert venue Read more » 28.07.2009: July 2009, Central European tour After a couple of weeks of summer vacation in our lovely Finland, it was time to pack again and head for Central Europe for a change. We flew to Stuttgart and took a train to Mutterstadt, where we had a very nice concert at a youth choir festival Read more » 10.07.2009: Long hot summer? Dearest Diary and all its readers, our this summer's first two-and-a-half-week vacation is coming to its end, so perhaps it's time to write down some greetings here. The last two weeks before the holiday were so full of work that during my vacation I've consciously been not thinking about work at all Read more » 11.06.2009: Life at full Dear Diary, the concerts with The Real Group at the Savoy Theatre, Helsinki, were fabulous. TRG is my true a cappella first love and, as we all know, that never loses its magic. As the members of TRG are not only wonderful musicians but also just fantastic personalities, sharing mutual respect and support with them is one of the miracles in my life. I could go on and on about how great they are and how much it means to me, but instead I'll tell about my personal highlight of the gigs and we can talk later about the other stuff Read more » 05.06.2009: Down under, part II Hello all! I'm writing this on my way home from Tampere, where I was adjudicating in the contest for vocal ensembles at the Tampere Vocal Festival, for the third time already. Sitting in the jury is a very interesting and fulfilling job – especially when you have such a cappella greats as Anders Jalkéus (The Real Group), Anna Maria Friman (Trio Mediaeval) and Bob Chilcott (ex-King’s Singers) as your colleagues. It was actually exactly ten years ago that we won the same competition... how time flies. The level of the groups in this year’s contest was again quite varied, the winning group being a wonderful German quartet Klangbezirk. Congrats to all the prize winners Read more » 19.05.2009: G´Day Mates! It's a loooooooong way from Finland to Australia. First 3 h to London, then 12 h to Singapore, then 7,5 h to Sydney AND then finally to Canberra, just 50 minutes... After all this my head felt so dizzy that I couldn't even remember that we were hanging down from our feet, head down on this side of the globe... I wonder if the Aussies can feel it Read more » 07.05.2009: Frühlingsstimmen in Germany, Finland and Norway For Rajaton the days around May Day (or International Workers’ Day...) were full of work. However, the May Day itself was free, for the first time in five years for us Read more » 24.04.2009: Loodame et kohtume jälle Tere! We had a very nice and sunny mini-tour in Estonia last weekend. Our long-awaited familiarization with Estonia and Estonians happened in the form of four concerts all around the country; in Tartu, Pärnu, Jõhvi and Tallinn. The concert promoters had done a very good job organizing everything, so we could just concentrate on the essentials such as enjoying our job and broadening out our world picture Read more » 14.04.2009: Acoustic adventures Before Easter we finally carried out our long-planned idea of acoustic concerts in Finnish concert halls. For this purpose we chose four smaller-sized halls (400-600 seats) which we had found suitable for acoustic singing on our previous visits: Kuusankoski Hall, Sello Hall, Raahe Hall, and Vaasa City Hall. They all proved to have just as good acoustic qualities as we had recalled. Especially the largest of the four, the Kuusankoski Hall, impressed us with its beautiful reverb and yet extremely distinguishable sound all the way to the back row. As musicians we’re pretty lucky to live in a country where there are wonderful concert halls in almost every community, unlike some other countries we’ve toured over the years Read more » 27.03.2009: Rehearsals: checked Dear Diary, only the last rehearsal left and then we're off to our unplugged mini-tour. We've been working with tuning and time; practice as you preach... We also had an open rehearsal at the Sibelius Academy last week. I hope the students also got something out of that – we definitely did Read more » 15.03.2009: Embrace the spring Hello everybody! It’s been a while since Soila last wrote in our diary. Since then we've had a ten-day winter holiday, rehearsed seven times together, performed in five concerts in three countries and done a number of other things separately to prepare us for the near future. During the next three weeks we will have seven concerts around Finland, so there is lots to do. It’s fun to go on tour again Read more » 17.02.2009: Ecstacy on the shimmering snow Kuopio, February 6th Our first school concert was awesome! We were little bit nervous 'cause it was a new situation for us. We would have to fit all the information and singing in 45 minutes and make it interesting and funny but be serious at the same time. We were sooo happy about the support from the pupils and how well they all behaved! We really enjoyed the atmosphere in the school. Thank you all so much Read more » 04.02.2009: The secrets of studio technology Dear Diary, January has changed to February and this vocal ensemble is back in business. The beginning of this year has been pretty calm, so we have managed to recharge ourselves from the busy Christmas tour and we all have the urge to continue touring. The rest of the year will keep us rather busy, so a bit more relaxing period was well needed. I suggest you to check out our concert calendar frequently because it will be updated when any future gigs are confirmed, and many concerts are still to be added Read more » 20.01.2009: 4711 Eau de Cologne The wheels of Rajaton are rolling again! We started this year by travelling to Cologne. This was our the first ever visit there, and hopefully there will be many more. The cathedral is stunning, and we saw the legendary fragrance advertisement at the railway station, but what truly impressed us was the wonderful crowd in our concert! Despite the radio broadcast they were delightfully loud and supportive for us and the co-act, pop choir Vocal Journey. Jawohl Read more » 04.01.2009: Happy this year! Dear Diary, looks like it's my job to write yet another account of a journey, and why not. Last time I reported our adventures in the wonderland called America, and I'm writing this just as jet lagged as back then Read more » 18.12.2008: Christmas tour in Finland – checked! Dear Diary, yesterday was the last concert of the tour in Turku and I have to admit that I feel like an empty balloon. Everything went really well and just the way we had planned it so I can smile and be glad, and that’s about all I can do right now Read more » 07.12.2008: From Estonia to Lapland The first leg of our Christmas tour ended successfully on the last day of November in Rauma, from where we headed straight back home. The next day it was time for a new country, Estonia, to be added in our CV. It feels pretty strange that it took us over 11 years to cross the 80 kilometres over the Gulf of Finland and enter the capital of our "brother nation". Better late than... Our concert was part of the Jõulujazz festival and took place in the big and beautiful Kaarli kirik church. More than 700 people came to see us and the atmosphere was awesome. Hopefully it came across to the people listening to the concert on the radio at home, too. Thank you Tallinn, thank you Estonians – see you in April on our Estonian tour! Aitäh Read more » 30.11.2008: Tour began, winter came – or did it? Hi everyone! Finally we started our Christmas Tour 2008! It feels wonderful to drive around Finland for a change, since we've been travelling all around the world for the whole year! It also feels like all the people are already in a Christmas mood and listen to our singing with open hearts. It´s soooo nice to sing to you all, night after night Read more » 24.11.2008: The sleighride begins! It’s finally time to begin our Christmas tour! I’m writing this on our way to Hämeenlinna where we’ll have the first concert of this tour around Finland. We are driving in the middle of a heavy snowstorm and it feels like a sleighride. It‘s great to finally get out of our the rehearsal room and start sharing the things we’ve been practising hard with real people. In the next diary entry you will most probably find out how the first gigs of this tour went Read more » 10.11.2008: Help to make the season bright... Hi Diary! Here I am, rehearsing Christmas songs by candlelight while an enormous autumn storm rages outside my window. I'm already doing pretty well with the songs – I even remember the new songs by heart, at least almost Read more » 26.10.2008: It's no fun being an illegal alien Hello everyone! More than a week has passed since we arrived from our last (=sixth) trip to North America this year. Personally, I've been suffering from a horrible jet lag this time, so please excuse the delay in my diary entry... Anyway, we're done with the Queen shows for now; hopefully there'll be more of them next year Read more » |
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