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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. Such is the case this year once again, plus that there has been and will be a number of orchestral gigs around Finland and Europe throughout the fall.

Last week was spent mostly in Kuopio, located in Savonia, central Finland, where we continued a collaboration of long standing with the local symphony orchestra, this time singing Queen. The shows were sold out ages ago, so it was fair to expect an enthusiastic reception, and the Savonian audiences certainly didn't fall short of any expectations; there was a big party going on at the Kuopio Music Centre on both Thursday and Friday nights. To make the week not too easy on myself, I had also promised to feature on a club gig with our rhythm section at the legendary Henry's Pub after Thursday's concert. As our conductor, Jaakko Kuusisto, also joined us onstage with his violin, we had a very special late night hour filled with wonderful 80's music such as Toto's etc... All in all, a very nice visit to Kuopio indeed!

From Kuopio we flew back to Helsinki to appear in a live broadcast of a TV show called Finland's Best Choir. This was the final stage of the competition, featuring a female choir from Helsinki and a youth choir from Kuopio! The last-mentioned won the title after a public poll, so congratulations to Kuopio; we already knew that you crazy people sure know how to sing it out loud! ;-)

As far as record-releasing is concerned, besides TV appearances there's lots of other things to be done as well. The one thing that has especially kept me busy lately is renewing this website, which should be finished one of these days. There will probably be quite a few bugs in the beginning, so I kindly ask for your patience, but of course all constructive criticism is more than welcome.

About this year's Christmas repertoire I can reveal that quite a few brand new songs written by ourselves are under rehearsal right now. The tickets sales for the Christmas concerts have been amazingly lively, by the way, so if you fancy getting a ticket you'd better hurry up already!

Before the tour, though, there's yet gonna be the Best of shows with the Lahti Symphony in Hämeenlinna, as well as the ABBA shows in Hanover with the local radio symphony orchestra. Yours truly is more or less a convalescent for the next few weeks after breaking a humerus in an ice-skating accident, but that's not gonna slow me down too much – after all, one shouldn't need both of his upper arms for singing, should he? ;-) The show must go on... Anyhow, the arm should be OK by the beginning of the Christmas tour.

See you around!

-hannu-