Image c/o Leela Konttavaara, ©Lenikont
This autumn will mark 10 years since the first-ever performance by Sistema Finland.
Locally known as Tempo Orkesteri, Sistema Finland thus joins an illustrious, and growing, club of European Sistema organisations to have successfully completed a decade in social action music activities.
At home in Vantaa
Based in Vantaa in the Capital Region of Finland surrounding Helsinki, Tempo Orkesteri was originally founded as part of the City of Vantaa’s The Whole World in the Suburbs project, a project which aimed to improve relationships between long-standing and more recently arrived sections of the population in Vantaa's Länsimäki and Koivukylä districts.
And, Tempo’s friendly, communal, low-threshold programme is the perfect match for Finland's most diverse city and its specific circumstances.
For example, Finnish statistics have shown that second generation children of non-native speakers are less likely to remain in education after completion of their nine years of compulsory schooling and proactive integration schemes (such as Tempo Orkesteri) are the perfect antidote to such trends, bolstering language skills and stimulating social inclusion.
The demographic context
A closer look at the demographic context shows why this is necessary, with c.10% of Vantaa’s inhabitants non-Finnish nationals and around 17% of the city’s population native speakers of a language other than Finnish or Swedish (also an official language in Finland). And, as many of this 17% are second generation children of newcomers to Finland, Vantaa’s schools display an even higher level of linguistic diversity than the city’s population as a whole.
As of the start of 2017, 23% of children aged 0-6 and 19% of school-age children in Vantaa were registered as having a non-Finnish/Swedish mother tongue, with 120 languages recorded in the city in total. Furthermore, official statistics suggest that these figures are set to rise going forwards, with Vantaa’s percentage of inhabitants with a non-Finnish/Swedish mother tongue predicted to double to c.34% by 2035.
Tempo Orkesteri perform at the Pensioners Federation’s 45th anniversary celebrations
Encouraging interaction
As such, Tempo Orkesteri forms an important part of the City of Vantaa’s integration programme for second generation youngsters, providing an enjoybale service that combines leisure activities and music learning within an environment that also promotes intercultural interaction and increased use of the Finnish language.
Working with local schools, the City of Vantaa and the Vantaa Music Institute, Tempo Orkesteri thus looks to broaden the horizons of its children and to emphasise and develop the positives of this exciting community by accentuating its dynamism and embracing the many cultures of Vantaa.
And, since early 2019, Tempo and its enthusiastic team have been winning over new young musicians in a third school in the Vantaa area. Building on its more established activities in the Länsimäki and Kytöpuisto schools, Tempo now also provides tuition to children attending school in the less-traditionally immigrant district of Rajakylä, thus ensuring another layer of exchange between children from the city’s more diverse districts and those from areas of Vantaa with longer-settled populations.
Photos of Tempo Orkesteri's 10th birthday party
All photography c/o Leela Konttavaara ©Lenikont
Use the arrows to scan the gallery
The children choose
In terms of the teaching, all c.120 pupils in the three Tempo schools benefit from a similar approach. Children begin to attend classes at the ages of eight or nine and receive two/three rehearsals a week as well as a short, 15-minute long private lesson each week to help consolidate the skills learnt together in the orchestra.
Although Tempo Orkesteri focuses on string instruments, its teachers also provide tuition in a wide range of woodwind, brass and percussion instruments and choirs form another integral part of the programme.
The tuition itself is provided free of charge at the point of receipt thanks to the support of the City of Vantaa and each child is able to individualy select its own instrument, with these then subsequently integrated into the orchestra.
While this might perhaps surprise some orchestra aficionados, Tempo’s artistic director states that this approach has worked perfectly so far and pays reference to how it also fits into the programme’s ethos, emphasising the importance of the children’s enthusiasm for their own active participation:
All children possess their own musicality and they are all able to learn how to play an instrument. The most important thing is enthusiasm and the desire to take part.
Juha Ahvenainen
A busy start to 2019
And, this enthusiasm is both bolstered by and able to find its expression in regular public performances. In the last few months, the Tempo children have taken centre stage as cultural ambassadors and a bridge between generations at the local Pensioners Federation’s 45th anniversary celebrations, travelled to Gothenburg to form part of a thousands-strong Side by Side orchestra and celebrated their very own anniversary in an evening of performances at the Martinus Culture House in Vantaa.
There have also been some extraordinary learning experiences for both teachers and children this year. In March, Tempo Orkesteri were treated to a special workshop with Kalevi Lohivuori and the KAiKU Music Glove, while, in April, the teaching team visited Madrid for an inspirational weekend of learning with fellow Sistema programme, Acción Social por la Música.
Celebrating 10 years of Tempo
Arguably, the biggest of these events for the Tempo team and its musicians has, however, been May’s big birthday bash and the successful culmination of months of planning and rehearsing.
Watch Juha Ahvenainen & a group of Tempo Orkesteri musicians deliver a special message as they look forward to their 10th birthday concert
Ably presented by the Finnish singer, Pete Seppälä of Pop Idol fame (entitled Idols in Finland), Tempo’s anniversary celebrations showcased the full spectrum of the programme’s work: children young and old took to the stage, the newcomers from Rajakylä joined some special guests and the longer-established young players from Kytöpuisto and Länsimäki and a broad variety of both musical and continental languages filled the Martinus Culture House.
Never too soon to get up on stage
The evening began with a performance by the most recent addition to the Tempo family and saw the newly-formed Rajakylä orchestra provide a first taste of the progress they’ve been making with three short tunes.
After Rajakylä had made their bow, we were then treated to a series of speeches by representatives of the City of Vantaa and Sistema Europe and a virtuoso performance by a quintet of Länsimäki school musicians and their Tempo teachers; in this case, featuring a piece adapted from the video game, Hitman!
Before the interval, we also got to see a specially prepared video looking back at Tempo’s first decade and how the programme originally came about (with reference to the formative influence of Orquestra Geração) and then it was time for the eagerly awaited Tempo cake!
The Tempo cake!
An internationally inspired repertoire
Post-cake and suitably energised, the Tempo Festival Orchestra (comprised of children from the Länsimäki and Kytöpuisto schools) took to the stage.
Beginning with a rousing intro from Tempo’s artistic director, Juha Ahvenainen, the Festival Orchestra treated us to five tracks and a wide range of musical inspiration, from Bach to Medrano and with singing in Turkish, Russian and Spanish!
Uska Dara saw Burhan Hamdon (vocals) and John Millar (clarinet) join the orchestra, Katyusha featured a solo by the young Alexander Goncharov and accordion accompaniement by Mikhail Vasilyev and Merengue saw two young members of the team literally dancing in the aisles, in a nod to both the piece’s own history and Sistema’s Latin American roots.
Jazz with a modern twist
After the eclectic performance by the Festival Orchestra, it was then time for something entirely different. The Finnish jazz trumpeter and composer, Kalevi Louhivuori, continued on from where he’d left off with the Tempo children in March, wowing the audience with an improvised combination of his trumpeting skills and the fingertip mixing abilities of the KAiKU Music Glove.
And, then, before we knew it, we’d reached the evening’s finale. There was just time for the Tempo Choir (featuring children from all three schools) to sing Aurinko by Risto Järvenpää and then Jarmo Ahvenainen got up on stage to lead the combined Tempo Festival Orchestra and Choir in a powerful medley of Beethoven’s 5th, 7th and 9th symphonies, ending the evening on a suitably European note very much befitting of the ethos of both the celebrations and the project as a whole.
Watch a full compilation of all the music from Tempo Orkesteri's 10th birthday concert
Going forwards
And, of course, post-concert, the Tempo story continues. We have already heard how 31 children from Vantaa attended the spectacular Side by Side camp in Gothenburg in June and there will be many more exciting events and stories from Sistema Finland to come, with much planned going forwards.
Alongside new repertoires and performances, the team look to form an integral part of proposed plans for the closer integration of children in the Rajakylä and Länsimäki schools and we shall look forward to reporting back on the Tempo Orkesteri/Sistema Finland story as it develops.
Keeping track of Sistema Finland
For now, we wish everyone in Vantaa a restful end to the summer holiday and propose the following links for keeping track of the team once activities resume this autumn:
https://www.facebook.com/TempoOrkesterifacebook.com/TempoOrkesteri
http://sistemafinland.blogspot.co.atsistemafinland.co.at
https://www.youtube.com/channel/JuhaAhvenainenyoutube.com/JuhaAhvenainen
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