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Welcome to a unique evening of live improvised performances at Forum Box Gallery as the Helsinki Experimental Series (HES) continues with its final event of 2025.📅 6th of November
🕖 18:00
📍Forum Box Gallery (Ruoholahdenranta 3 A Helsinki)
🎟 Free admission.
For this occasion, our grande finale, we will have three sets of solo performances and one duo performance by our main guests: Arnas Mikalkėnas, Livia Schweizer, Juho Tuomainen, Iiris Raipala & Nadja Pärssinen. Note that this event starts 30min earlier then the previous events.
After showcasing these outstanding performances, the stage will be open for the “Blind dates for improvisers”: A first-time encounter among members of the audience and our main guests. Bring along your instruments, get inspired by the art works at Forumbox, and perform with the main guests!
Schedule:
18:00 Doors open
18:30 Guest Artists Performances
20:00 Blind dates for improvises
Arnas Mikalkėnas
The main fields of activity of percussionist, pianist, composer and improviser Arnas Mikalkėnas are jazz, improvisational and electroacoustic music. He is a sound-oriented creator who is not afraid of, and on the contrary, strives to transcend any musical frameworks and to find his own relationship with music. A. Mikalkėnas’s musical experiences are particularly rich. Not only classical and jazz studies, but also musique concrète, rock, metal and other genres. One of the main ensembles where A. Mikalkėnas plays is the free jazz trio “Oak Birches”. In the course of his career, he has played with Vladimir Tarasov, Arkady Gotesman, Dalius Naujokaitis, Liudas Mockūnas, Eugenijus Kanevičius and others, but also with not less interesting foreign composers such as Kenny Wollesen, Michael Moore, David Stacken, Otomo Yoshihide, Kazutoku Umezu, Kresten Osgoodu, Anto Pett, Kirke Karja, Haakon Berre, Anne Liis Poll, Nuria Andorra, Santiago Quintans, Sergio Castrillón amongst others. He collaborates productively with Justinas Kalinauskas, the creator of contemporary alternative theatre and happenings, as well as Lithuanian and foreign composers. Arnas Mikalkėnas’ discography consists of over 20 albums.
Livia Schweizer
Livia Schweizer (b. 1994) is an Italian-born flutist, improviser, educator, and artistic researcher currently based in Helsinki. With a passion for exploring diverse musical languages, Livia is known for her deep interest in improvisation and non-conventional music notation, tools she believes can bring together creative minds from various cultures and backgrounds. After completing her studies at the Conservatorio di Livorno in Italy, Livia was drawn to the Finnish contemporary music scene, and she continued her musical education at the Sibelius Academy under the mentorship of Mikael Helasvuo and Hanna Kinnuen. Since then, she has established herself as a versatile freelancer, performing with ensembles and orchestras such as Korvat Auki, Eloa, Turku Philharmonic Orchestra, Lahti Symphony Orchestra, Jyväskylä Sinfonia, Pori Sinfonietta, Tapiola Sinfonietta, and Avanti!, among others. In the field of free improvisation, Livia has been invited to festivals and concert series in Finland, Lithuania, Germany, and the US, and she often collaborates with pianist and improviser Libero Mureddu. Livia is also one of the founding members of the Earth Ears Ensemble, a Helsinki-based group dedicated to performing new works by underrepresented composers. Through these projects, she continues to explore innovative ways of creating connections between cultures, disciplines, and artistic practices.
Juho Tuomainen
Juho Tuomainen is an ambient guitarist who creates improvised atmospheres as a vehicle for meditation. His calm and contemplative sound reflects his feelings on the impermanence of the human condition, as well as his affection towards the delicate nature of Japanese aesthetics. With a creative use of a looper, he likes to build imaginary environments, while letting the music breathe and speak for itself. Through his music, Juho wants to bring us back to our innermost questions and remind us that we are here only for a short while.
Iiris Raipala
Iiris Raipala is dance artist, performer and teacher based in Helsinki and Berlin. She graduated in 2004 as Master of Arts in dance from the Theatre Academy of Finland. She also has Master in Art Pedagogy. Her interests lie at the intersections of ritual art, dance improvisation as larger phenomena, somatic body-mind practices and performance. She is one of the founders of artistic-scientific Liminal Art Collective, which is working in the field of improvisation, ritual art and altered states of consciousness (liminalart.fi). She been working closely with improvisation and contact improvisation in several performing groups and has performed in the choreographies of many internationally acknowledged choreographers like Rosalind Crisp, Lisa Nelson, Tomi Paasonen, Tuomo Railo, Mirva Mäkinen and Nancy Stark Smith.
Nadja Pärssinen
Nadja Pärssinen works as a choreographer, dancer and teacher. In her choreography and performance work, she often studies the impact of visuality and live sound/music on bodily thinking. In her performance work, she is fascinated by the mapping of articulate and flesh physicality in relation to the present moment´s composition, different senses, materials, others and the environment, also creating multifaceted conditions for acting in improvisation works and the Wanderlust project. Her most recent dance film The landscape escapes in a relation to... was seen as part of Caisa's dancing screen event at Kulttuurikeskus Caisa in Helsinki, the interdisciplinary dance piece Let the wandering talk on it´s own way was part of Tanssivirtaa contemporary dance festival in Tampere, the Sketches of North interdisciplinary performance demo created in collaboration with visual artist Hannu Karjalainen was seen in WHS theater in Helsinki 2024. In addition to that, Pärssinen was also dancing in EMERGENCY dance piece in a collaboration with Australian choreographer Rosalind Crisp in Maunula-talo and KOKO theater in Helsinki 2024. www.npflowwow.com
HELSINKI EXPERIMENTAL SERIES 2024/2025 is a Community Engagement/Action Research/Artistic Research project, that intends to establish an interaction space for members of the different communities of improvisers based or working in Helsinki.
The HES 2024/2025 series is developed and funded in collaboration with: Forum Box Gallery, The Global Music Department of the Sibelius Academy, Interkult (Kassandra ry), and the KONE Foundation. The research, curatorial, and artistic direction component of this project is run by Sergio Castrillón.
The event poster is designed by Fabu Pires.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Forum Box, Ruoholahdenranta 3 A,Helsinki, Finland
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups - all the happenings, one place.
