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.

Chamber Opera performance hopefully coming soon

Well. It's been a hell of a long time since I wrote anything, and there's a lot to write about. We've been working on some new material with Paganus and it looks promising. We might put some of that stuff on record somewhere before spring. I also did a gig at the Hamina town square as Bull in a China shop somewhere in July(?) which was performed as background music for buying carrots & other goods.

Basically time has flew by eating eggs and butter covered bread with my family (in the picture on father's day), among other things. I also wrote a chamber opera following my own text called 'Nooa & Utnapishtim', and at the moment am trying to get it performed here in Hamina. It's about 40 minutes of weirdness & preciseness; a surrealism influenced work which takes me some place new as a composer.

Other things going on: Trying to get as many bands as possible to record new stuff (the Sun Tryst, Paganus, Raptus), possible live improv-performances on various instruments, cooking, keeping it cooking.

list of works (12.10. 2007)

List of works:

(as approved by the composer)

- Echoes from the dried waters - Jousiorkesterille [for strings] (2003)

- Basho-runoelma - naiskuorolle [for female choir] (2003)

- Dialoque with a scene - orkesterille [for orchestra] (2004-2005)

- Introspektion I - sello/sello-duo (2006)

- Ombra-interludi - "henkiä kevään ryteikössä" - sello, oboe, piano (2007)

- Klarinettikvintetto 'Double talk-quintet - Three approaches on

spoken word' - klarinetti, jousikvartetti [clarinet, string quartet] (2007)

- Invocation speeches for a silent god - Pianolle [for piano] (2007)

- Hommage Omar Khaijam (w.i.p) - sekakuorolle [for mixed choir] (2006->)

Concert at saturday 17.00 Vehkalahtitalo

There is a concert at vehkalahtitalo 17.00 on saturday profiling into my compositions from the years 2003 and 2007. The artists are (responsible of interpretation) orchestra of Kauniainen conducted by Ylermi Poijärvi, a quintet group from Helsinki: Aino Salo, Anna Äyräväinen, Elina Poikonen, Tuomas Auvinen, Eero Untamala, and for a trio piece: Jouko Teikari, Alexei Kalatchev, Niina Huopainen, and a piano piece will be played by Jouni Hirvelä. This is the largest event, and a first one to properly introduce my (art)-music for the crowd. There will possible also be a recording of the music, so it might appear on a myspace website somewhere in the future.

There was also an article at the sunday paper of kymensanomat, that can be found from the next page:

http://www.kymensanomat.fi/page.php?page_id=7&news_id=200734141400

The Concert:

Invocation speeches for a silent god (2007)

Ombra-interludi - Henkiä kevään ryteikössä (2007)

Double talk quintet - Three approaches on spoken word (2007)


**** brake, coffee & cigarettes****


Echoes from the dried waters (2003)


Ye' all Welcome!!!


- T

Bull at Nosturi & Possible record to come!

Well. The Bull did a performance at Nosturi, also performed Antti Tolvi with his minimalistic output, Basilian savut & the most disturbingly twisted Justice Yeldham: Although my set had some noise in it, he was totally Mr noise, up to the point where begun self mutilation, which I have to say took the whole performance sub zero. That is the point where I leave the audiance, as a principle, when the shock value of destruction won something that had nuances & construction, which I prefere totally over (postmodern) destructive approaches. I thought it was a shame, and have to say I loath all kinds off violence on stage whether its target is someone else, or the performer him self. I like to think art is aboat life and construction (whether it be painfull pushing it forward or dancing on roses). Death and destruction can however be material to abstract expression, but they have to be transcended to another level: as it was with Ligeti who loathed Stockhausen's joyfull reaction for 11.9. in U.S: Yep, it was not a work of art as Stockhausen had interpreted it, neither is self mutilation, even if we wanted bad to include sacrifical thinking in our expressive acts. The wrong way is taken (I think) where the vacuum of modern/postmodern identity has put us into the point where we have already compromised (aka sacrificed) our being, and we go even further into a form of a kind of double sacrifical-ritual in a sort of: "Look at me, I'm empty"-kind of way, putting our selves through the act of mutilation because we've already been driver over and mugged by the sosiopathic society, that -in a way- wants us to addapt, or in the extreme case, be fooling around with a piece of glass.
However! A performance of "trancended violince", done with a glass instrument (in a more ideal level) would have done the same trick, but would have taken the violence into the control of the performer, or the act, and done even more than the real mutilation (without the the easy way of extreme shock performances), whatever the meaning of using such ideal or trancended forces, or even if there were no intended bright-as- a-day-meaning, but more less obvious metaphoric levels in question, in bringing violence through music into the picture. (Eventhough I won't go to the everlasting art discussion now...)

Well, otherwise, without supermusical stuff, (as it is always there with out pushing it too deliberately there) it would've been great.

Anyway.. There has been some talk aboat putting out a record from Bull In A China Shop, and the material will maybe have some glimpses from "the pedestrian music". It is not yet definite what kind of material it'll be; more like the animal seen on few gigs, or a more minilmalist one spotted on the sidewalk... We'll find out. Maybe a hybrid of these elements. The Bull is an animal of controlled maximalism, and the point where this turns (through the logic of timbre-music) into minimalism is, I think, much more fruitful/meaningful than a prerequisite of minimalistic expression. It's all in the relation of things babe!

More later.... With a possible video clip from the gig. Chauuuuhh!


- T

The Bull strikes again!!!

The B u l l (s) hits the road again with his infernal one-man-band at downstairs Nosturi! The set is going to be more noisy than before, fitting the company mentioned in the poster above. Still it's gonna have some acoustic elements to it, however the final word gonna be said on the spot. There is a rising interest for me to do also some old fashion electronic stuff, so maybe we'll hear some of that also, since it is very much more comfortabe and nice to be working with electronics than mixing them with instruments, but I guess that'll be my cross to carry, since it (I think) has some originality in it mixing different stuff together in a new kind of brew.

So it is Tuesday 3.7. at Nosturi 19.00, a rare animal at the stage! With noise guru Justice Yeldham (Aus) & Antti Tolvi also to be checked out.

- T

'Music for pedestrians & fellow citizens'

On 5. of May the Bull in a china shop launches a project at the center promenade of Järvenpää, called Music for pedestrials & fellow citizens (Musiikkia kävelykadulle ja kanssaihmisille). It is a work of enviromental sound, consisting of improvisations pre-recorded by the Bull & organized into order (each one lasting a week) by a random cd-player. So it is a month long musical piece, that can be heard in Järvenpää from 15.00 to 18.00 on weekdays, a which is in interaction with it's enviroment, and works as a communicator between the people and the imaginary, with a sort of trancendental aspect to the every day life of the base, a call for dialogue, a stage without actors, where in fact the pedestrians become the main characters of a drama with no cathartic inclosure in the sense of a plot. The piece also evolves in the new creation of music for each week, so it's a work in progress of four weeks, and sheds a different light to the (indifferent) life of the center promenade & 'passagens' of trade & commerse (in a interpretative way of Walter Benjamin) of Järvenpää, ascending a context of it's own, against which everyone is to sustain theirs, in a way approaching the trancendentality of music & sound championed by Charles Ives.

- T