The bull states that the rumours of his retirement are largely exaggerated

It's been quite a while since I wrote to this blog ; the reasons have been many. Somewhere along the line I just found it more important to done things, namely music than to write about it, since all the priorities that come with normal life; family otherwise.
For the narrow selected bunch of people following this blog there has to be some kind of best of about what I've been doing all these years so here it comes: Since the last posting my chamber opera Nooa & Utnapishtim got performed 2010 in Vehkalahtisali Hamina (so that's four years ago), after that I took on to compose music for dance projects, the Elma art's project (a cross arts-project of many artists) that went as a video installation in Kino Poikilo for few months, composed a modern classical piece Tune in - for orchestra (2012) for an imaginative (yet planned to be) sculpture that works in sync with certain aspects of the sculpture as seen by the spectator; a piece large enough & through out thought as to be a sympony that exists only as a script, not as a computer note because performances of this piece haven't yet been established. For now the comments on this piece (based on the reading of the piece) have been: "it isn't that a shitty piece, it could well be performed" followed by a rejection without any good reason; just another year in the life of an underground composer: maybe it's just: ain't got the name - ain't got the game.
               I'm especially pissed of about this (eventhough I try to think about it with all maturity I have in me) since this piece was written with the half year grand from the Arts promotion Centre of Finland (south east department) and was to be something of an evidence about how innovative & creative I can be as a composer if I have the time & money for living while I'm working twelve hours a day & convincing my family that I'm doing something worth while. So now I haven't got the music performed that was composed two years ago which in turn leads into some problems with future grands (as I'm teaching music courses for living now with many employers) cause it's hard to write music without any time for it & followed by these conditions hard to show new developments as an evidence of my latest work. So this year is the only year from 1998 (when i started to try to write so called art music) when I haven't had any sort of art music piece finished.
To continue this sorry ass monologue, the beginning of this year came with a sort of dissapointment as I first time tried to write a piece for a composer's contest & didn't even got mentioned for the score. This piece was Climbers Will Set The Horizon (2013) for orchestra, a rising process of a piece, a sort of concerto for orchestra with ever changing tone material, an accelerating piece of music that looks at the ground (the same view) from different distances; an experience of building the scene of the horizon by climbing it. I guess the jury never got what I was trying to do with this piece of music, even though I still feel it will stand as an original piece of music, if it will ever be performed (since I got tired of being both; the artist & a louzy manager with no success under the line, guess that performance will never happen). Someone wrote somewhere: "If you've got a classical music piece written & you live in Finland it will be performed for sure". I don't really get how people invent this nonsense.
          The money that goes for a 50 piece orchestra is surely not just thrown away to perform some guy's latest inventions. Large amount of that money is put into concervation of the classics as: this is My Mozart this is my Beethoven & so on: It's a rough business. Everything different that asks permission to join to the sphere of classical music must be tested whether it's strong enough to bare the standards: to be important enough against the tradition (of radio stations that play willynilly long gone entertainment pieces of fat counts & dukes that eat sandwich at the same time as they watch/listen to the latest sitcom of their time) & not to mock Music itself; as if music was a false god of whose approval we need. Well to put it frank: what we really need in the case of musical expression - weather it's playing or composing or the both at the same time - is that we are true to ourselves doing it, not true to the convention of doing it: the what-is-true in music changes -see- alongst with the parameters, variables of the growth of the musician, the time & place of the music (when it is performed, when it is composed) & so on.
              After composing the Climbers.... piece I went on doing a fine collaborative project with Neil Owens, Marttaleena Nikkari, Beniamin Borghi, Lasse Nikkari & Thomas Freundlich with the piece Etiäiset in which I did the soundscapes & music. I think this piece was something to remember a strong statement & could be performed anywhere as an example of innovative today's art. Alongside with this I was doing some blues-gigs with my small blues combo Old Wood'n Joe's hobo Bluestruction (with the repertoir of my somewhat 40 blues-songs) and with the larger band Bluezy Expectations & doing some solo recordings with my improvisational project Bull in a Chinashop (five albums of this can be found form the page www.bullinachinashop.bandcamp.com including some of the music from the Etiäiset piece).
            Soon after these engagements with no funds coming from anywhere for compositional work & basically no one wanted my pieces performed after zilions of emails send to zilion venues & festivals, & since I had a libretto written for my next chamber opera Viisasten Kivi & didn't get a penny for the musical realization of that one either, I started to think: Hell... I better quit banging my head to the walls of the elitistic fineries of the classical music world & do something else for a change; try to bring back the fun in making music & trying not to be the guy from the movie Beautiful Mind scribbling mathematical formulas on paper about some conspiracy that never was (there's a strange parallel to an artist with no crowd with a schizophrenic that thinks he has remarkable news about the times we're living since both of them are putting time & effort in something that can't be understood).
        So I put together a death metal band Locust Year with Janne Markkanen, Sami Kotasaari & Samuli Rönkkö. We're going to be releasing a record somewhere in 2015 from some label or just by ourselves. A self recorded promotional tape can be found here: www.locustyear.bandcamp.com. For now I've written twelve songs for the band, including lyrics & it has worked well as a valve, a channel of expression. The good thing about bands is that it is an expressive act of more than one individuals in which everyone gives something to the outcome: it's also less weird to make music as a group than by your self, eventhough doing improvisational stuff for your self I think is ok as an example what I'm doing with Bull in... since that stuff is just trying to be a world that's always there for possible visitors & it's still there doing fine eventhough it isn't visited.
         It's the larger works that seem to get bitter for not getting performed/listened. So they're the ones I'm trying to give a lesson to as for what is real for one's self in making music, art or what so ever.. There sure is a large amount of mediation & compromises for one to do in the worlds of trying in any type of human activity; & sometimes "getting tired of doing something" seems to lead into good results  (even tough it can't  be hurried) in that particular sphere. Time will tell which one (if any) of these strange planes of musical activity will rise & on which levels of publicity: from which we come to a fine conclusion of what I've been doing lately: Well. I've been practicing: the word practice meaning both training & doing.