From Sunday, Kuhmo will be a dynamic centre of artistry. For two weeks, Finland’s biggest chamber music festival will put on 70 concerts and 10 course concerts featuring 150 top class musicians and future stars of the world of music. The festival will also be hosting two art exhibitions.

The festival starts on Sunday at 6.30 p.m., when Vladimir Mendelssohn will speak about music and the programming choices. The first concert is called ‘Insomnia City’, which will take listeners to New York on an evening of music and dance.

From Monday 10 July the days will be filled with music from morning to night. Every morning at 10 a.m. one of the festival artists will put in an appearance, and from then on the town will resound with music and song every day until at least 10 o’clock in the evening. Each day has its own absorbing theme, such as The Journey of the Magi, Moonflowers, The Russian Tea Room and (Un)written Letters.

There will also be concerts in Kajaani, Iisalmi and Sotkamo. The festival reaches its climax on Saturday 22 July with a performance of Handel’s Messiah, though this time it will also include a jazz band and a rap artist.

While the festival is on, there will be shows of the graphic art of Pälvi Hanni and Jaakko Mattila at the Kuhmo Arts Centre. And at the 4DESIGN exhibition at the Chamber Music Centre visitors will have a chance to see the recent design work of Yrjö Kukkapuro, Jouko Järvisalo, Kaarle Holmberg and Kimmo Varjoranta. All summer, Juminkeko, the information centre for the Kalevala and Karelian culture, will be exhibiting drawings and graphic experiments associated with the work of the great Finnish artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela and with Kuhmo.

Wholly different types of music will come together in perfect harmony this year at Kuhmo. Vladimir Mendelssohn was inspired in his programme planning by the photo taken by the Voyager space probe in 1990, showing the earth as just a tiny, bluish dot. That dot, however, contains everything and all music in a particle of dust floating in a sunbeam.

Just in case the probe ever encounters advanced civilisations it carries with it music by composers such as Beethoven and Stravinsky.

Vladimir Mendelssohn says it is the best thing humankind has to offer them. Though he adds that it might take a couple of million years to find these civilisations. Or even longer – what does it matter?

The budget of the 2017 Festival is one million euros. Kuhmo Chamber Music?2?s partner for 2017 is the OP. Its Friends are Canorama Oy, the magazine Eeva, the Etera Mutual Pension Insurance Company, F-Musiikki Oy, Kainuun Sanomat, Kaisanet Oy, Loiste Oy, Kuhmo Oy, Metsähallitus, No-Pan Auto Oy and Osuuskauppa Maakunta. Grants have been recieved from the Ministry of Education and Culture, the City of Kuhmo, Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation, Finnish Cultural Foundation and the Reginonal Council of Kainuu.

More information:
Kuhmo Chamber Music
tel. +358 8 652 0936