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