Safely at Helsinki Airport

Waiting to board the plane

We had a lovely send off this morning and will be emailing later to give a dedicated email address for you to send a selection of photos to be included in the trip DVD.

See you later!

Peter & HYM

Final Day

We finished our week with an eclectic programme of music in our final concert, ranging from the sublime moments at the end of Sibelius' "Pelleas and Melisande" suite to a massed performance of "ABBA Gold" when we were joined by several members of the local wind band.  After the concert we all had a party in the school.  Now we just need to get all the players, staff, instruments, luggage and passports back to the UK without incident.  Pray hard.

Peter

Hannah & Ion playing Bach conducted by Juhani

Some people took the party very seriously

extra video clip

Tom Davidson playing part of "HYM"

Here is another short clip from our concert in Kankaanpåå on Monday.  We hope to have a DVD of the whole concert to bring home.

Friday 31st August

Today we played 2 concerts in Kauhajoki church.  The first was to a few hundred school children in the morning and we played a selection of the more upbeat pieces in our repertoire, including "Knights of Cydonia" by Muse - featuring Finlay McGregor on distorted electric violin.  We then walked to the school for lunch before taking buses to a food festival on a farm a few kilometres away.  On our return to the church we had a workshop with Niina Kiprianoff, a violin teacher who is the head of the local music service.  Niina taught us some challenging clapping games before getting us to play through a selection of typical Finnish folk tunes.  The workshop was rounded off by everyone playing and singing a short excerpt form the Olympic Symphony which we performed last Easter.  This included all members of our ad hoc choir making the famous Ussain Bolt pose at the line "Faster than Dash"; to general amusement.

After what was probably our best meal of the week, in the local church hall, we had a final rehearsal with Junhani Numminen before our evening concert.  This was a serious and fairly heavy programme, including 3 movements from the Sibelius "Pelleas and Melisande" suite and 2 from the Bach double violin concerto featuring Ion Buinovschi and Hannah Gardiner.  Both of these performances (conducted by Juhani) were exquisite.  Other items in the programme included solos from Tom Davidson and Alex Rigby, Kodaly's "Hary Janos" Intermezzo and the finale from Dvorak's 8th Symphony.  These performances were stunningly executed, making the most of the rich acoustic in Kauhajoki church.  We rounded the evening off with "Moonlight Serenade" which is now sounding almost as good as the original "Boston Pops" recording.  The audience were very appreciative and a good time was had by all.  Every player was given a chocolate bar as a present.

Final performance tomorrow, back in Jalasjärvi, where we have been based, followed by a disco!

Peter Desmond

Today we had a very thorough rehearsal as well as some great workshops with Raine Rautanen (wind, brass, percussion and some strings - ABBA medley) and Juhani Numminen (strings - Bach double violin concerto).

Here are some clips from Monday's concert:

Thomas conducting "Crown Imperial"

"The Lord of the Dance"

more info

A short clip from our school concert today.

This is Alex Rigby playing the opening of Weber's Concertino in the second of our 2 short schools concerts today.  The playing of the orchestra continues to improve and they have given some stunning performances.  This evening we had a BBQ with the host families at a lakeside.  Various combinations of lake swimming, rowing, sauna and cooking sausages on a open fire were enjoyed by all.

Eve & Georgia, our 2 youngest members, cooking sausages

Very tired now........ more tomorrow.

Peter

The Trip to the "Devil's Nest" (Bunny Ears, Risque Sweets and Chocolate Boobs)

The calm moment before the scramble to the bottom of the hillock.

Sleeping Beauties! (Frances, Frankie and Will).

Turning the frog into a Prince.

The supermarket(!)

Charlotte screaming, again... 

The best Headgear in town

Frogs weren't always worn by choice.

On our first adventure into the wild woods of Finland, we were faced with a long intrepid journey into the bowels of the earth. In the 23 metres deep hole we met rare and poisonous frogs which now after being stepped on are a bit rarer. They may now also be too traumatised to function normally as are several of the group who were sporting the latest in the growing frog headgear industry, the hole will always be remembered by those lucky few...

Anna and Shona determinably facing away from the edge!

As are Luca, Bryn and Patrick.

It didn't seem so high from down here...

What you can't hear are the words "Don't leave us up here!" from Tom and Peter Austin (A local School's head of music).

The girl taking the superwomen pose is Izzie standing with Fraser, Ethan and Joe

After the traumatic frog incident there were then more steps to climb, all the way up the water tower were the holey floor let us all see just how far we could fall. And Eddie showed us how safety can be cool...

"Safety Swag"

We then got on the coach to go to what promised to be a shopping centre but was actually the biggest supermarket ever, there we had our first junk food of the trip, found moomin and angry bird sweets and bought Peter some presents (see title).

The one we all aspire to!

The (very very high!) view.

Our "best" photo!

We were taken back to the school on the coach and were picked up by our hosts, we then went back to our houses to in some cases walk cycle and explore but mostly (like us) to sleep! Then in the the evening the teachers and and the musicians (Frankie, Lucy, Jacob, Anna, Shona and me) who were lucky enough to be staying with the organisers were invited to Raine and Paivï's for dinner where we had an incredibly delicious meal and at the present moment the sauna and hot tub is filled with the teachers whilst we wait our turn!

Frances Bennett