June updates!

June 15, 2020June 15, 2020
by admin

Dear all,

We hope all of you are doing well and are safe and sound! After these months of uncertainty and fear around the world due to the Covid-19 situation, we will like to continue posting some more news and updating our blog with some new interesting announcements.

Online working

With the pandemic situation, we’ve definitely had some new changes to our working style. We’ve found that it’s been a great time to reach out and talk to many different people through online platforms. Our ensemble itself has already been used to working online, since all of us are living in different places at the moment. For the past couple months Cindy was in Helsinki, Sara in the U.S., and Antoine in the Canary Islands. In some ways it has been nice that everyone else has switched online more than usual, so that we can have remote meetings with people from around the world. We’re also trying to figure out new ways to use the internet to continue our activities, like webinars or online teaching.

Haiti project

Few months ago, through one of our side projects Collecting strings, reeds and accessories, we connected to a music school Symphonic Ecole in Haiti. Since COVID-19 pandemic hit the world, a lot of students lost the opportunities to have actual lessons with their teachers. It is the same situation in Haiti, Symphonic Ecole supposed to have a summer camp in the summer but due to the situation, it has been cancelled and postponed to next year.

In April, the organizer of Symphonic Ecole asked if we could offer online lessons for the students during quarantine time. We first started from Cindy and Sara’s clarinet lessons, Antoine has been helping us as French translators as unfortunately there’s no saxophone students at the moment. We didn’t expect our project to gradually grow as big as it is now. We are now having ten volunteer teachers from 8 different nationalities involved (Spain, Australia, Finland, the United States, Taiwan, Italy, Canada, Mexico) in this project and have been teaching violin, viola, cello, flute and clarinet students in Haiti.

Online teaching has been very challenging for all of us since none of us have enough experience for this, we also struggle on the unpredicted internet connection in Haiti as well as language barrier with students sometimes but we found most of our students are motivated and extremely talented. Some of the volunteer teachers also tried video teaching and we discovered it works better than online teaching and we were very happy to see our students are improving! Even though this is still an experimental project, we are still learning how to make it work better everyday.

What’s keeping us inspired

Staying inspired has been more difficult recently due to not being able to perform music with others or go to live performances. We wanted to share some ways we’re staying inspired:

Talking with interesting people and organizations:

During the past couple months we’ve had the opportunity to talk to many different people! We’ve been inspired by what Gabrielle has been doing with her organization, Teaching Artists International https://www.taimusic.org/about . We’ve been in touch with BLUME Haiti and finding out about their activities http://www.blumehaiti.org so we can learn more about Haiti. It was also great to have a chat with Erick and Daniel, composers from Mexico, and see how they’ve been doing!

Online webinars

We attended some webinar sessions by the Global Leaders Program https://globalleadersprogram.com which was open to the public. It was motivating to be able to attend these as an ensemble and gain some new perspectives and ideas! They recorded their past webinars, so we recommend you to take a look! There were topics ranging from tips on online teaching to music as action.

Brainstorming new ideas with our group

Another big part of our inspiration and motivation is our online group meetings. We always share any new ideas, resources, and things we’ve read that might be useful for our project. We’re also always on the lookout for anything else we could do as an ensemble. If you have any new ideas to collaborate or for our future projects feel free to reach out and talk with us!

We got a grant!

As probably all of you know, for this year we had planned to do our project Finland x Mexico x Guatemala. Our purpose consists of going to these countries to perform some new pieces we commission to local composers, such as Daniel Martínez and Erick Tapia. For supporting our project, we have asked for numerous grants and donors, and we are very happy to announce that we got a Mobility Grant from the Finnish Culture Foundation in order to help us with part of our trip. At the same time, we would like to thank all the donors who donated us through our GoFundMe in order to support the fees of our project.

Project postponed and webinars coming soon

Due to the COVID-19 epidemic situation, we decided to postpone our trip to next year in 2021. Even though we are not able to travel to Mexico and Guatemala this year, we are still keeping ourselves active and inspired and look forward to our trip next year!

Since we had to postpone our project, we have decided to do some lectures and webinars through an online platform in order to share some interesting topics, music and experiences with musicians from Mexico and Guatemala. Even though this year is not possible to go there, we would like to get in touch with musicians from these countries and start building connections and music through online lectures and activities. They will be available for whoever wants to join! Please stay tuned!

AEKI ensemble

Helsinki Performances

Helsinki Concert and Presentation

December 13, 2019January 9, 2020
by admin

After our inspiring journey to Cambodia since last May, AEKI Ensemble has been keen on traveling, performing concerts, doing personal projects in different counties and had enjoyed holidays a bit in between.

A concert and presentation in Helsinki

We’ve been planning for a concert and presentation for a while after we went back to Helsinki and now we are so excited that we finally had the chance to share our great experiences in Cambodia as well as the music we commissioned from Bosba with Finnish audiences!

We shared about the interview we filmed before our journey as well as our motivations and expectations about why we would like to share this with Finnish audiences. We invited the audiences in Helsinki to follow our journey through the video we filmed, to see, feel, and experience the cultural atmosphere, history, people, music, food through our eyes and ears.

We also presented the workshop activities that we did with students in RUFA during the presentation. Through the videos we filmed, the audience had the opportunities to experience how active and talented the students are!

A short introduction of Cambodian traditional instruments evoked curiosity in the Khmer culture from the audiences. They were amazed by how these instruments sound and how the knowledge of playing the instrument has been passed down for thousands of years without using any music notation we know.

Finland premiere of Bosba’s piece!

We have already performed Bosba’s piece several times in Cambodia but this was the very first time we performed this piece in Finland. After sharing the whole journey with audiences, we found this moment very special and intimate in the sense of how we connected and brought two extremely different cultures together through music.

New project coming up next year in Mexico and Guatemala!

Sara went to a mind-opening orchestra tour in Mexico this summer. She has discovered the vibrant culture and arts there as well as many talented young musicians and composers who are keen on connecting to the world through music. She shared her experience in Mexico with Cindy and Antoine after her trip and we all felt like Mexico is the place we definitely should go next. In addition, Guatemala geographically is very close to Mexico and we don’t know so much about the music scene in Guatemala (although we found out it is the birth place of the percussion instrument, Marimba!) we decided we are going to visit these two countries at once and gain first-hand experience to observe the music and culture there next year! We hope that these experiences could allow us more opportunities to then share it with our own communities in Finland and abroad.

Two miniature pieces composed by Mexican composer Daniel and Erick

We are so glad that we found two young and talented Mexican composers Erick Tapia and Daniel Martínez who composed a miniature piece for our next project in order to have a glimpse already for our audiences in Helsinki. We premiered City as? composed by Erick as well as two movements of Alebrijes composed by Daniel during our concert. Check the videos below:

AEKI Ensemble: City as? by Erick Tapia

AEKI Ensemble: Alebrijes by Daniel Martínez

Greetings from Erick and Daniel from Mexico to Helsinki audiences!

We thought it would be nice for the audiences to have some ideas about the piece from the composers, therefore we asked Daniel and Erick to send us a video explaining the idea of how they composed the piece as well as sharing their life in Mexico!

After the concert and presentation, many audiences came to us and said that they felt like they went to the trip with us and were deeply moved by the music from composers on the other side of the earth. For the three of us, we felt very glad and meaningful to know that our missions and goals were completed, and that the world somehow became smaller and closer through music. That through music we can connect our different cultures, languages, education backgrounds, living styles, and nationalities according to the reaction from the audiences in Helsinki on the 30th of November.

We sincerely appreciated everyone we met during our journey as well as all the people who has been involved and supported our project. We are very much looking forward to bringing more inspiration to you from Mexico and Guatemala next year!

Stay tuned and see you soon!

AEKI Ensemble

Cambodia 2019

Workshop and performance in Soundskool in Phnom Penh

May 31, 2019May 31, 2019
by admin

On our last Sunday in Cambodia, we had the opportunity to visit Soundskool in Phnom Penh. We did a workshop where we presented our instruments to the public, performed some pieces from our repertoire individually, and we finished by playing “Les danseuses de Rodin” , the piece that Bosba Panh composed for AEKI ensemble.

We would like to thank warmly Evie and Shira, organizers for the workshop/performance, for giving us the opportunity to perform and visit their music school, as well as hosting us in a very nice environment.

Cindy delighted us with her explanation about the cello. In Soundskool, they don’t have have any cello teachers and it is a very uncommon instrument in Cambodia. Our audience seemed to enjoy listening to the peaceful and tender sounds of the cello. She played the Prelude of Suite no.1 for cello solo by J.S. Bach and it was a pleasure to listen such a beautiful interpretation!

Then, Antoine continued with an explanation about the saxophone and the different possibilities with this instrument. He also explained about the family of saxophones since he also had his soprano saxophone with him. he showed and shared to the audience the different sounds of both instruments. In the picture, he was playing the orchestra solo from Jazz Suite No.2 by D. Shostakovich. Cindy also played the cello accompaniment of the melody.

At the end, Sara showed us the characteristics of the clarinet and the versatility with the registers and repertoire. For the audience, it was also very rewarding to listen to this instrument, since it’s another uncommon instrument here in Cambodia. From W.A. Mozart to S. Prokofiev, Sara shared with all of us the possibilities of the clarinet.

In conclusion, we would like to thank all the people who came to see and listen our workshop and performance and the staff at Soundskool who looked after us.

More post coming soon!

AEKI ensemble

Cambodia 2019

Final performance and workshop RUFA!

May 23, 2019May 23, 2019
by admin

We finished up our workshops at the Royal University of Fine Arts and presented a performance showcasing our activities there as well as premiering Bosba Panh’s piece in Phnom Penh. It was such a fun experience for us!

A final bit of “rehearsing”

Before the performance, we met with the students in the morning to “rehearse” a bit. The idea was to show a live performance of our workshops that we had been doing. We asked for three volunteers to practice leading the group in creating a repetitive rhythmic and melodic texture, made up on the spot!

The performance!

We started by describing our project, what we did in our workshops, and each of us introduced ourselves! We invited the students on stage and started the group improvisation/composition/conducting activity that we’ve been doing. We created some really cool sounds!

Then, we premiered the piece which was composed by the students in the workshops. Each student wrote one measure! The idea was that contemporary music can be many different things and it’s even possible to compose as a group to create one new piece. It would be interesting to perform this in Finland and bring back some of the unique ideas from the students at RUFA!

Finally! We explained a bit about Bosba Panh’s piece and we performed the new work for the second time in Cambodia. It was so special to perform at RUFA!

We’ll miss you all!!

Working with the students at RUFA has been such a great experience. The students have so much talent, curiosity, and interesting ideas! We hope to keep in touch and return again sometime to exchange more ideas about music! Special thanks to RUFA and Cambodian Living Arts for facilitating the workshops and performance.

AEKI ensemble

Cambodia 2019

Mitta Pheab: A new piece was born!

May 18, 2019May 19, 2019
by admin

We had another wonderful workshop day at the Royal University of Fine Arts! Mitta Pheab means friendship in the Khmer language and we feel that we have made some new bonds with the music students in Cambodia.

Introducing contemporary music!

We first started the workshop with a basic introduction on contemporary music. The students had many questions for us such as:

How much freedom does contemporary music have?

How do you prepare a contemporary music piece?

How long can a contemporary music piece be?

Each of us showed some modern techniques on our instrument!

Cindy started by showing some cool sounds on her cello.

Sara and Antoine share many similar techniques so they shared some cool single reed and woodwind tricks (flutter tongue, playing without the mouthpiece, slap tongue)!

We composed a piece as a class!

This was such a fun activity! After showing the techniques on our instrument we invited the students to come to the board and write one measure for our ensemble. We played what each person wrote in real time so that they could hear the piece come together. There was so much creativity and we felt so inspired. For example, in one section of this new piece we have lyrics and also semi-free improvisation. We’re so happy about this new piece which was created by the students at RUFA!

We’ll be sharing this piece tomorrow at our performance at RUFA! We will also be sharing some of the group improvisation that we have been working on, we can’t wait to share the stage with our new friends.

AEKI ensemble