Timo Alakotila spends a breath-taking week every summer at the piano and harmonica
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Timo Alakotila plays 23 gigs at the Kaustinen folk music festival during the week.
He performs in 14 different ensembles. There are quartets, trios and larger ensembles.
Alakotila is a long-time composer and musician who works as a freelancer.
On Monday Kaustinen’s folk music festival, which has started, lasts for a week. During that time, the musician Timo Alakotila playing a total of 23 gigs with 14 different lineups. In addition, the week includes workouts.
Sounds pretty fast. How do you cope with such a start?
“I run marathons. I’m in pretty good shape, even though I turn 65 on Monday,” Alakotila says on the phone between his gigs.
Training has also been accumulated for festivals. This is Alakotila’s 52nd time at Kaustinen – he first played there in 1973.
Shape it is a long-time composer and musician whose instruments are piano and harmonium. He works as a freelancer with the support of a five-year artist grant and works as a part-time art teacher at the Sibelius Academy. In addition to teaching, playing and composing, he does studio work.
Alakotila has collaborated with several artists and bands in the fields of folk music, jazz and classical music. He also works as the artistic director of the Kaukas EloFolk festival organized in Hyvinkää.
At Kaustinen’s folk music festival, Alakotila plays 14 different programs, some once and some more often. There are quartets, trios and larger ensembles.
From the beginning of the week, he performed, for example, as an American cellist and violinist Natalie and Brittany Haasin with. Earlier in the summer, the trio played at Haapavesi Folk and Kaukasten’s party hall in Hyvinkää.
The band T for Three, which performed twice this week, includes several good colleagues. Alakotila plays danceable hit music with them.
The folk music group JPP, on the other hand, is Alakotila’s longest-standing ensemble of the week – he performed in its ranks for the first time in the Kaustis summer. Now there is a vibraphonist Panu Savolainen.
For Timo Alakotila, the Kaustinen folk music festival is always one of the highlights of the year.
Training have to manage largely by themselves. We practice together at least once before the festival tour. Sometimes a repetition is enough, sometimes you have to take the sheet music with you on stage.
There have been gigs with some ensembles throughout the year. For example, an accordion player Maria Kalaniemi Alakotila gigs hard with.
For example, the 32-minute-long yökatrill, consisting of more than 15 songs, is also in good hands – it has been played with JPP on many occasions. Yökatrilli is a tradition that has continued for more than 40 years at the Kaustinen festival, where hundreds of people gather to dance to the rhythm of the pelimanni band.
Over the years, Alakotila has seen the Kaustinen folk music festival grow and the performance venues improve, but the atmosphere and the meaning of the encounters have remained the same.
“Yes, this is definitely one of the highlights of the year.”
The JPP band has been making festival guests dance for over 40 years.
Shapeless concert summer is busy anyway. Among other things, he taught piano and harmonica at Haapavesi Folk and went to Denmark with the JPP band.
In the musician’s opinion, even frequent gigs don’t feel heavy in the summer.
“I experience this as a vacation, even though there are gigs. Somehow I enjoy this kind of thing, and I enjoy the days off that are in between.”
“Perhaps there has been stress in some years, if there have been terribly demanding software programs. But yes, this is just one party in my opinion.”
During the folk music festival, he stays at a hotel in Kokkola. There you can relax and practice the next day’s repertoire.
“If you walk around here for a day without any gigs, it’s over and you need rest and sleep.”