Last week I saw live music on five nights, and the weekend rocked my world, musically. At the start of the week, I thought I might be pretty exhausted with listening to music when the week is over, but it was just the opposite – I was so hooked in, hearing beautiful things everywhere. I feel last week made me stop and give myself the time needed to delve into the wonderful world of music and appreciate things that are normally overlooked. That’s what this post is about, along with the reviews of the shows I saw. I hope you’ll take the time to read it.

Most people can’t really tell who is a talented musician. This was shown very well by an experiment The Washington Post conducted two years ago. One of the finest classical violinist in the world, Joshua Bell, went busking in DC playing classical pieces with a multimillion dollar violin. Only a handful out of 1,000 people passing by stopped, most of them not noticing anything out of the ordinary. Moreover, buskers make most money when they play familiar tunes people like to hear. Most people don’t know much about live music going on, so they pay three figure sums to see the most popular artists, or maybe they do that to look cool. By no means am I trying to say there’s anything wrong in seeing popular bands, there are just so many other fine things going on.

Ismo Alanko at Lutakko in Jyväskylä (Photo by V. Pasanen)

The shows started on Wednesday when I went to see an open mic night. That was nothing too serious and the quality of the performances was wide. It was nice to see hobby players get the chance to perform songs they have written, or covers. For the rest of the week it was all professionals, all very talented.

Thursday night I saw Ismo Alanko, who I introduced last week. It wasn’t very crowded, and when still 20 minutes before the starting time no one was standing near the stage, we decided to take the front row! I’m not the biggest fan, but his performance is so intensive and truthful that it’s a good experience to see up close. For the whole show, there were only two people on the stage. Ismo played guitar, organ or piano, and Teho Majamäki played percussion (some of his setup can be seen in the topmost picture). The sound he could produce with the percussion alone was surprisingly big. That was a good show by two solid performers. Here’s some videos from the show.

On Friday there was the long awaited concert by Tommy Emmanuel. He’s unknown to the big public here, but a huge name for me. My preparation for the show wasn’t the best, studying and driving car for the whole day, which I like to label as “left brain stuff.” So it took me some time to move to the creative right brain and feel the music (my friends tell me it’s not physiologically that simple how the brain functions, but those are the metaphors I like to use).

The show had a surprise opener, a talented singer from Australia called Rick Price. He performed songs of his own that the audience had never heard, telling the stories behind them. I liked him, and I got the impression that so did most of the audience. Tommy opened with his new song Locomotivation and continued with other songs that are not on his studio albums. He was on a very good mood, looked genuinely happy to be on the stage performing for us. The heavily percussive performances Mombasa and Initiation were huge crowd favorites, but I have to say I liked the more melodic songs better. I was happy to see Classical Gas live for the first time, and Since We Met never fails to strike me with its sheer beauty when I see it live.

It turned out be a great show, many people say even better than the one he played in Helsinki a year ago. Last year’s show was magical to me, but that was mostly probably because of great seats and perfect mood for the show. Although he gathers big audiences world-wide doing his own thing, Tommy’s music is really something you have to stop for to truly appreciate it. That’s how I feel. Most people just say “wow, that guy can play guitar” and that’s about it. Many musicians admire him for his technique. But there’s so much more to it, and I have a hunch there’s still so much more for me that I haven’t yet understood.

Another guitarist, Adam Rafferty, also performed a couple of tunes at Tommy’s show and joined Tommy for one more. That was a huge day for Adam, meeting Tommy Emmanuel for the first time. I recommend you read about the day and his feelings on his own blog. Hearing what Adam – a great guitarist himself – says about Tommy makes me think there’s so much about Tommy’s music that I haven’t yet figured out, which makes me even more eager to keep on listening.

Adam Rafferty (Photo by Vesa Huuhka)

On Saturday, it was Adam’s own show at a bar called Piano in Helsinki. He’s pretty new to fingerstyle, but having played jazz professionally for over 20 years and studied classical guitar, you can imagine him picking it up very quickly. I don’t like to compare Adam to Tommy. Simply put, they’re both so great that they are both a big pleasure to listen to. And they’re both good entertainers.

Adam’s show turned out to be so much fun, just the perfect start for Saturday night. He wanted the audience to have fun and played some amazing guitar. A young Finnish fingerstyle guitarist, Pauli Halme, also got the chance to perform a couple of songs. I’ve known him for a couple of years, but this was the first time I saw him on stage, and I liked his performance a lot.

Adam Raffety and some of the audience at Piano (Photo by Vesa Huuhka)

It was lots of fun to hang around with Adam after the show. He is a very nice person and has many interesting thoughts. He has written about many of them on his blog, besides music there are issues such as self growth. I’m pretty new to it, so there’s a lot for me to read as well. I told him I feel like I’ve been getting into jazz for a long time, but still it feels so strange. He replied “You have to listen to the right stuff, check out George Benson’s old records.” That’s what I’ve been doing this week, and they’ve been so good!

Finally on Sunday, a good friend invited me to see the St. John Passion, a classical composition by Bach. Now that’s something out of the ordinary for me to see, and I liked it. The acoustics were good, and I was amazed by the beautiful sound produced by the performers all acoustically. It was an interesting experience.

I might write some more when I get more video material from the shows. Some of them were show in HD video by the concert promoter. Here’s Tommy, Adam and Pauli playing Stompin’ at the Savoy backstage before Tommy’s show.