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..the ten short films included on Disc One of Live At We Jazz – Season 1 do an excellent job of conveying the wealth of talent and diversity of sounds to be found on the Finnish jazz scene...

The Helsinki Universal Guitar Festival features all the dimensions of six strings.

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.