Diary

10.07.2009: Long hot summer?

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. I've spend the holiday right here at home which is a welcome change for our pretty travel-emphasized work. I've gone to the park daily with my daughter, and I've tried to diligently practice my bass-playing. Why bass-playing, you ask? The uninformed can find the answer here. ;-) (in Finnish only, I'm afraid...)

But let's now go back in time to mid-June. After the absolutely fabulous combined concerts with The Real Group, reported by Essi in her diary entry, we shut ourselves away in the studio for a few days to record a long-time live favourite of ours, Finland's 1989 Eurovision Contest entry song called La Dolce Vita, for our upcoming Best Of collection. As for myself as the arranger of the song, I was occupied with the studio work from dawn till dusk; what would be a better way of spending the few Finnish summer days? ;-) The song was almost finished and it sounds really good! I've been pleasantly surprised lately, by the way, on how good also some of our older recordings sound, having listened to them quite a bit lately and pondered on which songs should be included in the compilation...

For the Finnish midsummer weekend we travelled to Toronto to sing some ABBA. Our expectations were high, since we were to collaborate with one of Canada's top orhestras, the Toronto Symphony, and our old acquaintance and nowadays also a dear friend, the newly appointed Music Director-Designate of The New York Pops and a party animal by the grace of God, Steven Reineke. The orchestra did equal its reputation, and fortunately we also had the chance to check out the Toronto night life with Steven after the second show. :-)

Already during our Australian tour in May something really positive, in my opinion, happened to our ABBA show: the audience reactions were so overwhelmingly enthusiastic that sort of by accident we became almost like real pop-stars, all of us fully enjoying the situation and just doing our thing at full blast. After all, it is a nostalgic concept show; many people come to hear the favourite tunes of their youth and are already warmed-up before a single note has been played or sung. For us as performers, the beautiful thing is that we're not even trying to be a look-alike or sound-alike act, we're just singing these classic pop songs simply as ourselves, and still even old ABBA fans seem to thoroughly enjoy it. The Australian ABBA ecstasy was continued in Toronto, with nearly 3000 people dancing and singing along to Dancing Queen in the end of both concerts. What a feeling!

After returning from Toronto we slept one night at home and flew on to Finnish Lapland for a couple of festival appearances. In Rovaniemi we performed at the Jutajaiset Folklore Festival and in Tornio at the Kalott Jazz & Blues Festival. Both audiences were large enough but maybe not quite as noisy as the Canadian ones, but anyhow the atmosphere was really warm in both concerts and it felt good to visit Lapland again. For Friday night we flew back to Helsinki to appear in a private occasion before going our separate ways for holidays.

Before our next two-and-a-half weeks of summer vacation we'll spend a couple of weeks in Central Europe. At the Europa Cantat youth choir festival in Utrecht, the Netherlands, we'll have the chance to give vocal group ateliers for as long as eight days in a row! I wish a nice holiday for those of you who have it, and a beautiful summer for absolutely everyone (at least those of you who live on the northern hemisphere)!

Hannu