Turku Music Festival and Aboagora bring militant sedition to the Sibelius Museum in August

Aliisa Neige Barrière, Artist-in-Residence of the Turku Music Festival, collaborated with her brother, director-dramaturge Aleksi Barrière, to create a production titled Songs of Judith, to be performed at the Sibelius Museum on 12 August. This performance sheds light on a secret tradition where female composers and authors envision what a rebellion by women against their male oppressors would be like. Could it be non-violent? Built around a cantata based on the Biblical story of Judith by Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre (1665–1729), the programme explores the psychological, moral and spiritual relevance of revolution through rarely heard Baroque and contemporary works. The dramatised performance brings together musicians of the Nordic Hehku collective and the Finnish Baroque Orchestra for the first time.

Avant Aboagora: Courage, resistance and musical activism across the centuries

Before the Songs of Judith concert, musician and scholar Marika Kivinen is to give a talk in the Avant Aboagora public lecture series on musical activism and courage in various resistance movements. This sets a tone of sedition for the concert and provides context.

Marika Kivinen is a mezzosoprano, a historian, a gender studies scholar, a racism scholar and a columnist. She is completing a doctoral dissertation in general history at Åbo Akademi University on exoticism and racialisation in early 20th-century vocal music and culture. Kivinen performs regularly as a singer, having appeared for instance as mezzo soloist in the Requiems of Verdi and Mozart. She is a voice teacher at the Arts Academy of the Turku University of Applied Sciences and sings alto with Ensemble MMXX. She is on the Board of Directors of Suoni, a research association promoting activist musicological research.

Aboagora is a meeting place for artists, scientists and the public. Now in its 14th year, it is held at the Sibelius Museum in Turku on 28–30 August 2024. The theme this year is ‘Mars, the Bringer of War’. The Avant Aboagora talk preceding the aforementioned concert is open to the general public; admission is free.

Talk jointly organised by Aboagora and the Turku Music Festival

The Turku Music Festival and Aboagora have been collaborating for years, the Festival being one of the founders of Aboagora.

Petra Piiroinen, project researcher and producer with Aboagora, describes the scheme and the collaboration: “The ethos of Aboagora is that resolving the woeful problems of our day requires not only a cross-discipline approach but also a merging of artistic and scientific perspectives. This year’s theme – Mars, the Bringer of War – is a good example: war is such an inconceivable and all-obscuring thing that there is no branch of arts or sciences which is unaffected by it and which cannot be used to somehow try to comprehend it. This project, originally launched by the Turku Music Festival, the University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University, occupies a niche between art and science and has established itself as pioneer in cross-discipline and cross-sectoral debate. The current partners in the project are the University of Turku, Åbo Akademi University, the Arts Academy of the Turku University of Applied Sciences, the Åbo Akademi Foundation and the University of Turku Foundation. We also continue to enjoy collaborating on content with the Turku Music Festival!”

Liisa Ketomäki, Managing Director of the Turku Music Festival Foundation, is pleased that Aboagora is still going strong and willing to continue collaborating with the Festival: “As we noted, the Turku Music Festival was one of the founders of Aboagora. It is wonderful to see how it has evolved into an independent player in its own right on the Turku event scene. The success story of Aboagora encourages us to contribute to launching similar projects in the future, as we have seen how they can take on a life of their own. It is important for Turku to have such a high-calibre framework for bringing together arts and sciences, and at an international level to boot. Aboagora and the Turku Music Festival have a shared vision of what Turku needs: high-quality international events.”

Aboagora is a forum for artists and scientists, a facilitator of collaboration and a space for innovation. It holds an annual three-day main event at the Sibelius Museum in Turku and also organises a research retreat and Avant Aboagora previews that are open to the general public. Launched in 2011, the year in which Turku was a European Capital of Culture, the project is a pioneer in collaboration between the arts and sciences. It is rooted in the notion that comprehensive problem-solving requires not only a cross-discipline approach but also a merging of artistic and scientific perspectives. The partners of Aboagora are the University of Turku, Åbo Akademi University, the Arts Academy of the Turku University of Applied Sciences, the Åbo Akademi Foundation and the University of Turku Foundation. In 2024, the project is supported by the Kone Foundation, the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Fund, the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies and the Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland.

The Turku Music Festival is Finland’s oldest continuously running festival, having been founded in 1960. The Festival has always focused on classical music, which remains its principal interest, but its programme is nowadays regularly augmented with a curated selection of popular music. The Festival runs around the year but culminates annually in a multi-week main event in August. In 2024, the Festival includes some 30 concerts and other events in August, with items added through the summer. Avant Aboagora is the most recent addition to this year’s calendar.