28.3. Club I
Death, despair, colonialism, abyss
At the restaurant club of the Helsinki Music Centre
On Maundy Thursday 28th March at 8 pm
Tickets 30e / 15e / 5e (+ extras)
The themes of the first club are death, despair and global inequality. Speakers include activist and equality educator Javiera Marchant Aedo, poet and political activist Ajak Majok and journalist-activist Emma Kähkönen. The word art programme will deal with colonialism, white supremacy, hope and hopelessness.
Not only is Maundy Thursday a suitable time to play death and agony music, but it’s also a good day to dig out the dirty corners of our society. This Maundy Thursday’s musical performances will feature mezzo-soprano Isabella Shaw, guitarist Lauri Hyvärinen, pianist Fanny Söderström, lute player Kaisamaija Uljas, .~𐋐 ^̴̸̴̸̴̸̴꙳ཀ 𝚔𝚊𝚕𝚖𝚊 ཫ꙳^𐋐~. (DJ) and violinist Eriikka Maalismaa. The music revolves around death and despair: the anguished songs of Barbara Strozzi from the 17th century, Clara Iannotta’s dead wasps, Jean Sibelius’ Valse Triste and the premiere of a new work by Lauri Hyvärinen. Scored for voice, electric guitar and electronics, the work places the synthetic and the intuitive in interplay, focusing on moments of disconnection and withering of sound.
The centrepiece of the club will be American composer David Lang’s Death Speaks. Death speaks from beginning to end: Lang uses lyrics from a collection of lines from Franz Schubert’s extensive lyrical oeuvre. Lang was fascinated by the empathy of Death, who appears in Schubert’s songs as a concrete figure bringing peace in the midst of pain. The themes of death and withering are also explored through a meditation on death developed jointly by Keith Hennessy.
accessibility
The Music Centre’s restaurant-club has an accessible slope by the entrance and toilets near to the main entrance on the Kiasma side of the building. Please ask the staff for assistance if needed and read more about Musiikkitalo’s accessibility here: musiikkitalo.fi/en/accessibility/
The club’s programme is mainly in Finnish with some parts in English. Translations of these will be made available to the public with separate instructions on site.
music programme
David Lang: Death Speaks
for singer, violin, piano and electric guitar
Jean Sibelius: Valse Triste
for violin and piano, visuals by Markus Kåhre
Clara Iannotta: dead wasps in the jam-jar ii
for violin
John Dowland: Flow my tears & In darkness let me dwell
for singer and lute
Barbara Strozzi: Che si puo fare
for singer and continuo
Pjotr Tchaikovsky: The Doll’s Funeral
for piano
Lauri Hyvärinen: v + elec, egtr
for singer, electric guitar and electronics
.~𐋐 ^̴̸̴̸̴̸̴꙳ཀ 𝚔𝚊𝚕𝚖𝚊 ཫ꙳^𐋐~. (DJ)
spoken programme
Javiera Marchant Aedo
Ajak Majok
Wilhelm Blomberg & .~𐋐 ^̴̸̴̸̴̸̴꙳ཀ 𝚔𝚊𝚕𝚖𝚊 ཫ꙳^𐋐~.
the artists

Ajak Majok
is a Helsinki-based & Oulu-raised go getter, artist and a memelover who likes to dance at work & for leisure. During February of 2023 Majok self-published her debut collection of poems by the name of Kins keeper. Majok will be doing spoken word from her book at the Invasive Species club.

.~𐋐 ^̴̸̴̸̴̸̴꙳ཀ 𝚔𝚊𝚕𝚖𝚊 ཫ꙳^𐋐~.
” ..the voice of motherlike warmth enters you:
tiiimeee falllllinggg ooofff ttthe boooddddy. fffeelll cccold yeettt… I risssse wwwith thhhhe rivvvverrrr runnninggg warmmm aaaand rrrred… with my bllllood sssssisterrrrsssss Lovvvviiiiatarrrr, kkkkkkipu-tytttttö, kivvvvutar, vvvvaaammmatarrr… I’lllll hhheelp yyyouu withhh tttthe nevvver enddinggg ppaiiiin… trrrrust iiisss allll I neeedddd… emmmpathhy mussssttttt beee unnnnlockeddd… … palms breathing… donttt miiiind theeee smelllll hehhheheeeheee… ”

Eriikka Maalismaa
and their violin are in a constant career and identity crisis.

Fanny Söderström
I am a pianist from Helsinki. I like to challenge myself and keeping myself busy. I have a Master’s degree in Music from both the Sibelius Academy and the Berlin University of the Arts. I play regularly in the Uusinta Ensemble and the Trio Est ensemble with violinist Abel Puustinen and cellist Anna Westerlund. I also work as artistic director with flutist Aapo Järvinen at the Toivakka Chamber Music Festival, which we founded together in 2019.

Isabella Shaw
is a mezzosoprano, harpist, poet and multidimensional artist. Shaw is a founding member of experimental early music ensembles Emrys, Motus Harmonicus and a graduate of SibA Opera. She is currently working on a multi-media performance on Afrodiasporic queer worldbuilding, Etheric Harmonies. Shaw is the author of Weyrwood, Songs of Remembrance, and Wilderness.

Javiera Marchant Aedo
is the activist your mother warned you about (Jamie MacDonald 2018), an unapologetic control freak, a walking vasemmistomeemi (or was it meemivasemmisto?) with exceptionally weird pink blood.

Kaisamaija Uljas
is in a state of constant despair and rage, with or without their lute.

Lauri Hyvärinen
is an artist whose work is situated in the intersection of improvisation and electroacoustic composition. His recent work examines and exposes the relationships between place, memory, documentation and process, with its essence captured in sound textures spontaneously evolving in situ.

Wilhelm Blomberg
is an environmental activist, performer and educator. His artistic work combines performing arts, research on environmental emotions and direct action activism. The ultimate goal of his work is to build hope through collective action, strengthening collective agency.

Tutu youth
bring their collage works on peace and racism to the club. The young asylum seekers’ collages will focus on their experiences and hopes for a better world. The works were created in art workshops by the youth group of Support for Asylum Seekers Tutu, together with visual artist/social worker Satu Söderholm.

Emma Kähkönen
is a feisty journalist-activist who has a knack for ranting about both forest and cultural policy.

Elissa Shaw
is a producer for life, zigzagging through the bogs between hope and despair.