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Sonja Virtanen Quartet's debut album draws from hard bop and soul jazz from the 50s and 60s. The sound is warm and, in a good sense, somewhat rough around the edges. The music, however, is not as retro as the sound.

Author and musician Maritza Núñez has written the librettos for 42 operas to date. In 2018, operas based on her libretti will be performed in Finland, Estonia, Russia and Peru. Here she discusses the art of writing a libretto.

Olli Kortekangas excels at sensitive ensemble writing in his opera My Brother’s Keeper about the Finnish Civil War, but the work is hamstrung by its amateurish libretto.

"Each of the three female voices is strong in her own right, but blended together there seems no end to the variation in mood and colour they can create," describes Ton Maas in his review of the group's gig in Belgium.​

As streaming revenues and their significance have increased, the fairness of the distribution system has become a topic for global debate within the music industry. Consumers have an important role in this discussion as the distribution method may have a crucial impact in increasing the amount of shareable money for all parties. A study performed in Finland was based on Spotify’s streaming data, which was used to compare pro rata and user centric distribution models.

The French researcher Iégor Reznikoff suggested in the 1980s that Finnish rock paintings have an echo. Decades later, researcher Riitta Rainio and her team decided to find out if this claim stands true and what the implications might be.

FMQ put together a playlist of opera scenes in which or as a consequence of which a woman dies.

This year marks the centenary of the Finnish Civil War. My Brother’s Keeper, a new opera by Olli Kortekangas, focuses on the tragic wartime events in Tampere.

What is the societal function of music – and art in general – in addressing violence? Should art depict violence, and if so, how?