By Eeva-Maija Vehviläinen

I came to the Heinävesi Ancient Week with an invited by my musician friend Veera and I didn’t really know what kind of project I was participating in or what to expect. The experience however was holistic, inspiring and deep. I feel like I’m still drawing from it, even after a month or so.

I could write a lot about the whole week’s experience, but I’ll focus on improvising in nature.

It was one of the most surprising and inspiring experiences of the week.

For my part, my first experience of improvising in nature took place on Thursday morning. On Tuesday i had seen the impressive Roots in the Stone film and Wednesday evening we had had the shared sound journey at the library, which, at least for me, had already built a great musical connection between the musicians present. Those were already deep experiences for me on a personal level, and that’s why I was already in an open and sensitive space Thursday when we left to the nature to improvise.

The first exprience took place under and around a large rock formation (sorry, I don’t remember the name of the place). I remember intuitively ending up sitting under the big stone. I took the jouhikko in my hands and immediately I experienced peace and harmony, a meditative flow, from which it was naturally easy to sense the space, the surrounding nature, the coolness of the stone, the freshness of the summer morning and other musicians. It was just effortless to produce sounds, simply and together with others. Almost simultaneously, without changing words the other musicians joined in and together we created a timeless-feeling soundscape in conversation with the silence. Nothing was really planned, but the situation arose and opened up and also found its end organically. I remember that under and inside the stones the acoustics invited to make small sounds. The combination of the knocking of the stones and the roughness of the jouhikko sounded great. At the same time, more powerful, voluminous instruments played further away, outside the stone cave, so that the they did not bury the smaller sounds but all sounded great together. Being in the middle of the forest, among the stones, somehow automatically tuned me to listen sensitively and make sound with the living richness of nature and on its terms. After the improvisation, I felt cleansed, balanced, and enlivened.

The same day we also went to the stone with a hollow cavity inside. The experience by the stone was also surprising and rich. Like many others, I took my turn sitting and doing sound improvisation with my own voice inside the stone. Sitting inside the stone itself was a very physically gentle experience, it felt surprisingly soft and soothingly cool on a hot summer day. There was something mother-like, sensitive and yet steady and gentle about the experience. The acoustics inside the stone were special. The sound resonated almost like an effect, and in certain parts of the cavity it felt really pleasant, even nurturing in the body. The sounds that I made in the speech register level felt especially good. Vocalising like that with relatively low voice made me really feel like staying at certain points. I tested the sound at different points in the dimensions of the cavity, but I wanted to return close to the entrance of the cavity, that’s where the voice sounded most pleasant. After improvising inside the stone again, the feeling was very different than before being inside. Soft, light. The stone really felt healing in some way.

The experiences in other natural sites were also very rich and felt meaningful  also on a personal level. Generally speaking, I felt improvising in natural sites really homelike and at the same time fresh. I loved being in the forests, it’s usually easy for me to feel a strong connection to nature, and now I got to be there in connection with music and with other skilled musicians. As a musician with a folk music background, of course, the elements of folk music but also free improvisation are very familiar to me from years ago, but I discovered them again after a longish break and in a new and refreshing way. I feel that the experiences of the Heinävesi Ancient Week, and indeed especially the experiences of improvising at ancient sites, left me with a natural and at the same time fresh and inspired relationship with making music. I am immensely grateful for that.

Eeva-Maija Vehviläinen is a singer and musician who makes music based on voice improvisation, plays jouhikko and sings and performs under the stage name Eeva Meret. She also leads courses that delve into the holistic human voice.