Please join us on Thursday, February 13 at 3:30 PM (ET) for a performance of “How a Sound Follows Another” with hakosalo_tuohino.
This presentation will take place in person at Silence, 46 Essex Street, Guelph, Ontario.
This is a free event that follows the duo’s talk at the University of Guelph.
This performance of “How a Sound Follows Another” follows-up on the duo’s talk at the University of Guelph.
In this performance, hakosalo_tuohino will demonstrate their art-theoretical approaches.
In their own words:
Our improvised music comes from the archaic kantele playing tradition, where you are in the music instead of making it. Drawing from the deep listening method, our sonic expression is a spatial and temporal experience that cannot be recorded and repeated.
Our relationship with musical transitions is two-fold: we understand the power of slow transitions when creating our musical structures, but at the same time they inevitably set up new boundaries and classifications. How can we compose together with each other and the audience without creating new structures and boundaries?
With our music, we aim for sonic freedom, where we break away from the western understanding of music and our musical backgrounds. The drone has a special role in our music, because we think of it as a purely experiential unit where compositional logic breaks down. At the end there is only sound, a resonance.
On the other hand, the importance of silence is even greater: you must be quiet in order to listen. What will thus remain of our musical deconstruction?
hakosalo_tuohino
duo for kantele and computer from Finland
CHANGE FROM DOING TO BEING
What happens when ancient traditions collide with experimental electronic
music?
The duo for kantele and computer consists of folk musician Osmo Hakosalo and sound artist Jussi Tuohino.
The Finnish ancient traditional instrument kantele is estimated to be 1500 years old and belongs to the Baltic zither family. The tradition of playing kantele relies heavily on archaic, improvisational techniques where kantele is seen as a vehicle, rather than a musical instrument, to travel to the essence of music transferring the experience from making music into being in it. Furthermore, the prepared kantele and immersive spatialized digital expression will transform the delicate kantele sonicality into the modern art of electroacoustic music.
In this journey one reaches other states of consciousness, and the total communication between the musicians and their dedication provides a fascinating sonic landscape to the audience.
hakosalo_tuohino duo takes the sonic properties of kantele still many steps further: from the acoustic sound immersive soundscapes are built in an intuitive and open-ended fashion. With both performers having varied musical backgrounds in folk, classical, jazz, and electronic music, the duo is able to perform without preset plans regarding musical form and microscale decisions concerning sound material. Kantele-playing is traditionally improvised, and an interesting confluence to freeform electroacoustic live performance can easily be made.
The duo builds their soundscapes up from live kantele sound, which is the only sound source, and performs with specialized surround sound systems to help the performers and audience to reach their immersive sonic goals.
Duo was formed in January 2024, but it has been able to gain success quickly, with performances already in Finland, Japan, Lithuania and Canada. Duo has also prepared a commission piece for a Swedish modern music ensemble Elefantöra. The piece had a premiere in Stockholm in October 2024 and was performed in Nordic Music Days in Glasgow in November 2024.
In addition, the duo started a collaboration with a Japanese film/media artist Keitaro Oshima for a joint multimedia piece in the fall of 2024. The duo is also working in academia with Jussi Tuohino leading the music technology program in Oulu University of Applied Sciences and Osmo Hakosalo working in the same university’s research program of Art Innovations.
For more info, please visit our web page www.hakosalotuohino.com