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The Lions have an interesting musical repertoire associated with them, and to the delight of many and the disgust of others this repertoire is revived every year. Thanks to the media that function as extensions of the ice hockey arena, these songs are ubiquitous, and new ones are added every year.

" Could there be a better performance than what the Latvian Radio Choir and Sigvards Kļava are able to put on? Hardly. It is elegant and harmonically precise throughout. A few harsh-ish squeaks in the high voices, e.g. in the Sanctus of the Missa duodecanonica, don’t matter that much."

"Music has the ability to prompt such a profound emotional sensation that words fail to describe it. Yet it also has the ability to prompt in us a desire to write about it – above all, paradoxically, in cases where the music seems the furthest removed from the realm of linguistic expression."

" The repertoire, which includes 'Jealousy' by Jacob Gade, 'Stella by Starlight' and two versions of 'Finlandia', is executed masterfully. The musicians dig deep down into the grief of the Finnish soul, while still retaining some humour now and then."

Rock star, bohemian, busker, creative genius, contemporary composer, pop singer, session player. Our images of music and musicians are easily associated with images of money and wealth, or the absence of same. Some of these people seem to be filthy rich, while others do not have two pennies to rub together – or simply do not care.

Music, too, can be used for malevolent purposes, as Arttu Tolonen reflects in his column.

"Apart from the three cellists, Perez and drummer Mikko Sirén, the hidden hero of the album is producer Nick Raskulinecz, who has made Apocalyptica sound punchier and more colourful than ever before."

"The Kalevala, which has since been translated into 61 languages, has harnessed this metre into something particularly Finnish, as well as stifling it into a literary form over the course of time. Every single Finn has sat at school bored stupid while reading a book that was meant to be sung. Even so, Kalevalaic runo singing metre is still alive in our culture – it can even be found in today’s singing. At least in contemporary folk music."

Dancing and music used to be joined at the hip. In folk music, this symbiotic relationship was preserved for a long time due to the fact that the bulk of traditional music is actually dance music. Today the connections between these two art forms are being examined at the Sibelius Academy Folk Music Department and through the many and varied projects of the Tsuumi Dance Theatre.