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

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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:

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