Welcome to Sysmä Summer Sounds!
Sysmä Summer Sounds is a countryside festival of music and other arts in Central Finland, organised for the 25th time this coming summer.
The 25th Sysmä Summer Sounds will be heard on the shores of Lake Päijänne from 3 July until 10 July, 2010. The programme has been selected by the artistic director of Sysmä Summer Sounds, violinist Minna Pensola.
The range of performers at this year’s Summer Sounds includes many leading Finnish artists, such as Iiro Rantala, Petteri Salomaa, Ari Rasilainen, Jan Söderblom, Kristiina Elstelä, Henri Sigfridsson, Martti Rousi and Meta4. Festival´s international guest is clarinetist Matthew Hunt (GB).
Sysmä Summer Sounds is made possible by local effort, and hence there is a strong regional identity in the spirit of the festival. Yet the profile of the programme is international and of high quality.
The idyllic venues of Sysmä Summer Sounds form a significant part of the unique atmosphere of the festival. The beautiful wooden church of Luhanka gives the symphony concert a luxurious setting: with seats for 2,000 people, the church is located in the rugged landscape of Central Finland, it is acoustically magnificent and it creates an exceptional experience of space.
The medieval church of Sysmä represents Gothic style. It is made of grey granite stone and burnt bricks. The exact time of its construction has not been firmly concluded, but it is regarded as one of the oldest churches in Finland.
Sysmä is an old central parish in the eastern part of the province of Tavastia (Häme), and known for its large manor houses. Two of the venues of Summer Sounds concerts, the Virtaa Manor (Virtaan Kartano) and the Virtaa Old Manor (Virtaan Vanha-Kartano), are located in the vicinity of rivers Tainionvirta and Virtaankoski, which form a landscape of cultural-historical significance.
As the frosting on the cake, there is the Ilola Opera Barn (Ilolan Oopperalato). To make it possible to premiere Donizetti’s Il Campanello di notte at Sysmä Summer Sounds in 1987, the incredible voluntary workers of the festival restored an old barn building and named it Oopperalato after the model of Oopperatalo, which means ‘opera house’. This endeavour gave Sysmä its own opera venue. The old log house, situated in the courtyard of the Ilola Manor, had functioned as a venue of parties and entertainment over the years, and was already known through another pun, “Ilolan riemuriihi”, which again means ‘the merry kiln of the merry place’. The evening entertainment at Ilola has developed into a concept known throughout the province of Päijät-Häme.
Welcome to Sysmä Summer Sounds!
