Finnish-American Song Exchange

Juilliard Around the World

By Brian Zeger
In May, I had the pleasure of bringing two singers and a pianist from Juilliard to Finland to collaborate with gifted colleagues from the Sibelius Academy. Students from both schools performed a recital in Helsinki called Touching Magic that features Finnish and American songs. They will repeat the program in Paul Hall September 13 as part of the inaugural Juilliard Fall Festival.

Juilliard and the Sibelius Academy have collaborated on orchestral projects in the past, but this was the first joint project involving singers. The collaboration had been long in the making. I first met Markus Lehtinen, a Sibelius Academy opera professor, in London in 2019, when Juilliard toured a production of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. As we threw ideas back and forth, the one that seemed most feasible and most rewarding for our first collaboration was to create a program combining Finnish and American art song.

Arriving in Helsinki the week before commencement, soprano Abla Benzemroun, tenor Jack Hicks (Pre-College ’21, voice), and collaborative pianist Francesco Barfoed (MM ’22, collaborative piano) met up with two singers and a pianist from Helsinki to tour the remarkable theater in the Finnish capital’s elegant and super-modern Musikkitallo (House of Music), where their performance would take place in a week’s time. The Musikkitallo is part of a sleek and impressive arts and civic space containing a large symphony hall, a modern art museum, and the coolest, most interactive public library I’ve ever encountered.

The following morning, we were driven to an enchanting rural arts retreat for our rehearsals. About 45 minutes from Helsinki, Kallio-Kuninkala is a perfect environment for art-making and relaxed sociability. It consists of early 20th-century houses and a barn converted into a rehearsal/ concert space, surrounded by lovely gardens on the shore of a crystalline lake. Combine that with the magical light of long early summer days as the summer solstice approached, with twilights stretching toward midnight. The Juilliard and Sibelius Academy students really had time to get to know one another while working hard on the upcoming program.

While Markus coached performers musically, Martina Roos, a senior lecturer of stage skills and drama at the Sibelius Academy, helped the singers develop the program dramatically, encouraging a dynamic and ensemble-based approach. A native Swedish speaker, she also coached the Juilliard singers on text and interpretation.

Our students were so fortunate to have Markus and Martina guiding them. While Finnish art songs have a special place in recital programs, this powerful and varied body of work can be tricky for non-Finns to access artistically. Most of the well-known songs are in Swedish, and the musical language, while sharing some traits with other late Romantic music, has a special flavor, a starkness that contrasts with the harmonic and textural richness of the piano writing.

The American songs I chose included works by three present-day composers: Libby Larsen, John Musto, and Ben Moore. We were able to facilitate a number of contacts between composers and performers, ranging from in-person coachings to Zooms and written responses to videos. For some of the Sibelius Academy students, this was one of their first experiences with American song. What resulted was a wide-ranging program, loosely connected by poetic themes with music ranging in style from Sibelius’ craggy intensity to Musto’s ragtime-influenced settings to Ives’ evocation of a village parade.

The trip was not all rehearsals and coachings. We had a private tour of Sibelius’ home, Ainola, which is next to Kallio-Kuninkala. Students enjoyed a morning talk on Sibelius songs by Gustav Djupsjöbacka, author of the recently published book The Songs of Jean Sibelius: Poetry, Music, Performance. And there was the lakeside sauna, where our time was punctuated by plunges into the invigorating waters of Lake Tuusula.

We look forward to welcoming the Sibelius Academy contingent to Juilliard in September and hope you’ll join us for this unusual and adventurous program.

Brian Zeger (MM ’81, piano) is artistic director of the Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts