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16.09.2009: The Beatles, Queen, Abba ...and more

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!

During the concerts I was feeling very nostalgic, especially while singing the Beatles songs. I can still vividly remember how we walked to the stage of the newly built Sibelius Hall where conductor Osmo Vänskä and the big symphony orchestra were waiting for us. It was such a “dream come true” situation even though I remember being very nervous. However, Osmo and the orchestra musicians received us very warmly from the very beginning of the first rehearsal, and so did the audience when we finally got to sing to them.

The concertmaster in the Beatles concerts was Jaakko Kuusisto who followed Osmo Vänskä in conducting our joint concerts since the reprise concerts of our ABBA programme in 2004 when Osmo started working more and more in Minnesota. Most of the arrangements in this year’s concerts were Jaakko's, but a couple of great Beatles arrangements by Osmo were also included.

If you are interested in having a taste of how this year’s concert looked and sounded like you can watch it at the ClassicLive website where it will be on view until the end of September. In you happen to be in Finland in November you can also come to Hämeenlinna where we are having two more concerts with the same orchestra and programme on the 14th of November.

After these three concerts with the orchestra it was time to concentrate again on a cappella which is of course always our main focus. The last outdoor concert of the summer was held at the Pyynikki Summer Theatre in Tampere, Finland. The darkening autumn evening was very beautiful and the audience was fantastic, as always in Tampere. One bonus for us as performers was to look at the crowd that was sitting under a newly-built roof. It looked as if they were watching us from the mouth of a humongous frog, as Jussi put it... See for yourself at the Pyynikki Summer Theatre website!

The last few days we’ve been busy roasting chestnuts dressed up like Santa’s little helpers... It’s about time to get ready for our traditional Christmas tour which will begin in the end of November.

I wish everybody a great beginning of fall,
Ahti