It’s over for another couple of years, and all my Finnish friends have gone on to their midsummer celebrations. What a wonderful experience this 50th anniversary was – so many singers supporting each other and producing some stunning music. There is no other vocal festival like it – no one else has values-driven singing at their core. 

 The Ensemble Contest had more acoustic than amplified groups, a reversal of the trend towards amplification that has been with us for most of the century so far. As always there were fantastic Finnish groups, alongside ensembles from Germany, Austria and Latvia. We put together a sparkling concert programme with each of the ten groups doing one song.  As always, the judging was agonising, and there were inevitable disappointments as well as ecstatic whoops of joy. But we explained our decisions in the feedback party (a brilliant way to do it) at which everyone had a great time, and the audience certainly seemed to agree that we’d got it right. The overall winner was NEÅ from Finland, the first time since 2003 that a Finnish ensemble has won the Contest.

 

In my time as chairman we started to introduce coaching sessions between the heats and the gala concert. This is now much more integrated into the schedule, with public sessions at which each group choses a song that is not the one they are going to perform in the concert. It also gives us a chance to get to know the singers better, and I had a great time coaching three acoustic ensembles, 4T from Latvia, Octavians from Germany, and Aves from Finland. 

 

After two incredibly intense days I had a day off, so Penny and I took the boat to Viikinsaarii, a magical island with an equally magical restaurant. 

The next day was the Grand Anniversary Sing. This was a joyous and hugely risky event, meticulously planned but not rehearsed at all. Each of the 9 Artistic Directors were asked by this year’s Director Merzi Rajala to lead a song associated with their year. There were some amazing contributions from my colleagues: an energetic warm-up with Sanna Valvanne, followed later by a breathtaking (and breathless!) African song. Merzi herself had the whole audience doing her bidding Jacob Collier style, and there were more serious reaches into Finnish musical culture from Matti Hyokki, Jussi Chydenius, Jaakko Mäntyjärvii and Heikki Liimola. I tried to do ‘And so it goes’ as a giant ensemble piece but ended up waving all the way through.  The audience of around 1000 was in good voice and we all got to the end at the same time. It was a fantastically ironic final concert for me, having made a career out of not conducting or being conducted, to stand in front of the wonderful Tampere audience and conduct them. Truly, wonderfully, bonkers. 

In other news, my sixth and last book (it’s always the last one) has gone off to the publishers, so I’ve finally ended my eighteen month long Christmas Eve. Expect gardening blogs over the summer while I wind down. In the meantime, Miranda has just published a conversation I had with Giuseppe Pantano about all things Dowland. There will be more actual Dowland to come, once the David Gorton/Stefan Östersjö recording reaches a final edit (see Dowland in Sweden).