I’ve performed solo piano improvisation concerts at the Temppeliaukio Church in Helsinki on an almost weekly basis since 2002.
On September 23rd, 2020 I played there for the 500th time, can you believe it?
It is such a fantastic place!
The church has wonderful acoustics, it is an architectural beauty (talking about Wow-architecture) and the Steinway grand piano they have is the best piano I’ve had the honor to play on, ever.
And I’ve played on quite a few to be sure.
In March 2015 I spent two evenings in the church recording improvisations based on songs of the Finnish Book of Hymns. The CD was released on Midsummer Day, June 20th, 2015 and has sold several thousand copies by now.
Here is a short video from the recording session:
During the 2020 corona pandemic I played several concerts in an Empty Church, streaming the concerts to a worldwide audience.
One of the concerts (May 27th, 2020) was recorded for CD publication. On June 2nd I added some classic analogue synthesizers like the Oberheim OBXa or the Mellotron and the outcome sounds like this:
Both recordings, ‘Here – Beyond The Infinite’ and ‘The Empty Church Concert XI’, are available for download and/or as a CD on my Bandcamp-site.
My concerts usually take place on Wednesday mornings (by exception sometimes on Tuesday or Thursday, due to other bookings of mine or the church’s) starting at 10.15am.
Please check the Gigs page for upcoming dates!
On selected Fridays at 3pm I will continue with a series of chamber concerts called ‘Two Moons‘.
In these concerts I am improvising in a Duo setting with some of Finland’s most renowned instrumentalists and a couple of international visiting friends, as well.
Welcome to the magical Temppeliaukio Church!