The Finnish Center at Saima Park

Fitchburg, MA


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Welcome to

F.C.S.P.

Fitchburg, MA


This website is dedicated to all the activities at
The Finnish Center at Saima Park.

Here, you will be able to find information about the organization, our activities, external and internal cultural events such as festivals, dances and art shows to name a few, meetings, and last but not least summer and winter sports events.

 

Saima, spring 2005 - click on the picture to get to the Beautiful Saima page ! ! !

 

Click on the Function Hall picture to go to the "Beautiful Saima" page, where you can visit the park in a picture cavalcade!

 

Please visit also our Winter Wonderland - and see what we are up to during the snowy season!

 

Thank you to
Cabot Creamery
Cabot Cheese of Vermont
for their generosity in donating cheese for our Kesajuhla event

 

Upcoming Events


June 28 & 29, 2008 - Saturday - Sunday
102nd New England Finnish Summer Festival
(see below)

August 23, 2008 - Saturday - 8:00am to 10:30am
Pannukakku/Finnish Pancake Breakfast

September 21, 2008 - Sunday - Nordic Marketplace/Tori

October 18, 2008 - Saturday
Catered Dinner-Dance featuring the National Finlandia Foundation's Performers of the Year
Brent Buswell and Bert Stromholm

 

June 28 & 29

102nd New England Finnish Summer Festival

Summer Festival Concert

Saturday, June 28th at 7:30 p.m.

Musical group Sillanpää from Finland

 
 
Jemina and Selina Sillanpää have been studying music since they were still in kindergarten. Their formal studies took place in Lahti Music School but through the years they played and studied folk music at home and at festivals and courses. They have always been interested in dance and theatre as well as music, and at the moment Selina is studying musical theatre at Lahti University of Applied Sciences and Jemina is studying acting at the Theatre Academy in Helsinki. Jemina has also been acting in TV and in two long movies that premiered in the fall of 2006.
 
Seppo has been playing folk and country music since he was a teenager. His first professional group was called Vanha Isäntä and during that time he also worked as a studio musician and also as a visiting musician for other bands such as Cumulus and Pihasoittajat. The first Seppo Sillanpää solo recordings came out some ten years later after a period of finishing studies of musicology, teaching music and several radio jobs. The CDs Akustin Polska and Lamentarola led to the formation of a new string band that played on biggest folk festivals in Finland in the beginning of the 90s including backing up Peter Rowan at Kaustinen 1991. 
 
The next two Sillanpää albums featured children's music and Seppo's own daughters Jemina and Selina as singers.
 
In 1995 Seppo began playing folk music with the girls as a trio and gave some of the first concerts in USA during a radio survey trip to Ithaca New York. The next two U.S. trips were actual concert tours; in the summer of 1997 'The Sillanpää Family' played around in New York state. In 1999 they recorded a new bilingual album called Moon Madness and soon the "Moon Madness Tour" took the whole family to New England and New York for 15 concerts including a 3 hour WVBR radio show Bound for Glory in Ithaca and a video recording session at Fall Creek Studios, Ithaca.
 
The trio has performed widely in the US.  However, this will be their first appearance at Saima Park.

This concert has been made possible by the sponsorship of the

Fitchburg Cultural Council, Finlandia Foundation national and Finland Society


Sunday, June 29th - 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

10:30 Summer Festival Fun Walk at the Reipas Field
 
11:30 - 1:00 Chicken Barbecue
 
1:30 Cultural Program
  • Readers Theater performance of a Finnish play (translated and directed by Roy Helander)
  • Revontulet folkdancers, accompanied by Oivan Ilo
  • Scandinavian vocal ensemble Stämbandet will do a program of Finnish songs
The festivities will also include
  • Moomin stories for children
  • saunavihta talk and demonstration
  • Raivaaja Book table
Summer Festival Artist is Mark Grammel
 
Arctic sundaes after the Cultural Program
 
Telegram & Gazette Article

 

Finnish language course


Rent
F.C.S.P. Function Hall or Ravintola / Sirkka Liukkonen pavilion for your
birthday, company outing, family reunion, wedding, etc. !!!

Click [here] for more information

or call (978) 343-9883, and select mailbox #1


For more info how to become a member of F.C.S.P. - click [here].
We now have an electronic membership application form!

 


More past events - 
they are on a separate page!

Click on [this link] to get there.

 



All material on this site, unless otherwise noted, is © The Finnish Center at Saima Park, Inc., 2001-2005.  All rights reserved.
This page was last updated on: 06/29/08

Feedback, suggestions, etc - please contact the webmaster@saima-park.org