The half-finished heaven

Sinikka Langeland

EN / DE

The half-Finnish Sinikka sets “The Half-Finished Heaven” – and other verse by Tomas Tranströmer – on her fourth album for ECM. “Despondency breaks off its course / Anguish breaks off its course / The vulture breaks off its flight. / The eager light streams out …” Such vivid images establish a tone for what is primarily an instrumental album this time, with a striking blend of sound-colours in music written by Langeland. Sinikka’s kanteles – 10-string, 15-string, and 39-string table-harps – seem to carry archaic echoes older than “folk” tradition. Lars Anders Tomter has been described by string-players’ magazine The Strad as “the giant of the Nordic viola”. One of Norway’s most distinguished classical soloists, he also has a history of collaborating with players of other idioms, and appeared on Sinikka’s “Maria’s Song” album (as well as on ECM discs with Terje Rypdal and Ketil Bjørnstad). Saxophonist Trygve Seim and drummer Markku Ounaskari  were both members of Sinnika’s  quintet heard on “Starflowers” and “The Land That Is Not” and play together in contexts including the Kuára Trio. Out of this network of musical relationships Sinikka has created a characterful quartet with a strong identity of its own.

Die Halb-Finnin Sinikka vertont auf ihrem vierten Album für ECM “The Half-Finished Heaven” und andere Gedichte von Tomas Tranströmer. Sie prägen auch die Tonlage für Langelands Kompositionen mit ihren markanten Mischungen der Klangfarben. Sinikkas Kantelen – 10-saitig, 15-saitig und eine 39-saitige Tischharfe – scheinen archaische Echos zu transportieren, die älter sind als die „Folk“-Tradition. Lars Anders Tomter ist vom Magazin The Strad als „der Gigant der nordischen Bratsche“ bezeichnet worden. Er ist einer der profiliertesten Klassiksolisten in Norwegen, hat aber auch viel Erfahrung in der Zusammenarbeit mit Musikern anderer Genres. So war er auch auf Sinikkas Album „Maria’s Song“ und auf ECM-Alben von Terje Rypdal und Ketil Bjørnstad vertreten. Saxofonist Trygve Seim und Schlagzeuger Markku Ounaskari waren beide Mitglieder von Sinikkas Quintett auf den Alben „Starflowers“ und „The Land That Is Not“  und spielen unter anderem auch im Kuára Trio zusammen. Aus diesem Netzwerk musikalischer Beziehungen hat Sinikka ein charaktervolles Quartett mit einer starken eigenen Identität geformt.
Featured Artists Recorded

January 2013, Rainbow Studio, Oslo

Original Release Date

06.02.2015

  • 1Hare rune
    (Sinikka Langeland)
    04:07
  • 2The light streams in
    (Sinikka Langeland, Tomas Tranströmer)
    04:29
  • 3The white burden
    (Sinikka Langeland)
    03:55
  • 4The half-finished heaven
    (Sinikka Langeland, Tomas Tranströmer)
    06:49
  • 5The woodcock's flight
    (Sinikka Langeland)
    05:53
  • 6Caw of the crane
    (Sinikka Langeland)
    05:39
  • 7The tree and the sky
    (Sinikka Langeland, Tomas Tranströmer)
    03:51
  • 8The magical bird
    (Sinikka Langeland)
    03:44
  • 9Hymn to the fly
    (Sinikka Langeland)
    03:28
  • 10Animal miniatures
    (Sinikka Langeland)
    02:06
  • 11The blue tit's spring song
    (Sinikka Langeland)
    04:27
  • 12Animal moment
    (Sinikka Langeland)
    00:19
It’s a session replete with beautiful sounds: Seim’s soft outbreaths pulsing through the tenor against Ounaskari’s deep, sepulchral booms; Langeland’s delicately lucid vocal tones against the precise but rough quality of Tomter’s viola; mysterious, metallic abstractions displaced by a pulsating viola rapture on ‘Caw of the Crane.’ […] For music inspired by the life of forests, and so rooted in traditional folk forms, Langeland’s themes are often invitingly modern-sounding, too.
John Fordham, The Guardian
 
You could be forgiven for thinking that a little kantele goes a long way. The zither-like stringed instrument produces a magical, almost bell-like sound when plucked of strummed suggesting the tintinnabulation of the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt as much as rough-hewn folk. Played by the Norwegian musician/compser Sinikka Langeland, in combination with the viola, tenor sax and percussion of her quartet, it conveys a  an other-worldliness that is very appealing. Langeland also sings lyrics (in their original Swedish) from three poems by Tomas Tranströmer that give this album both a title and a sense or reverence for nature. Despite the beauty of her voice, it’s the trance-like instrumentals that compel repeated listening.
Phil Johnson, Independent on Sunday
 
Das ist ebenso fremde wie berückende Klangmalerei, die der Bratscher Lars Anders Tomter komplettiert. Das nimmt sich Zeit und schenkt genau damit welche, ist emotional berührend und bleibt in den so entfalteten Atmosphären gar nicht fremd. Es dominiert das umgarnend Elegische. Das ist wie gemessene Gänge durch eine weite Natur und vertont sinnlich drei der raren Gedichte des schwedischen Literaturnobelpreisträgers Tomas Tranströmer.
Ulrich Steinmetzger, Leipziger Volkszeitung
 
Heel soms beleef je als luisteraar de sensatie dat de afstand tussen jou en de muziek volledig verdwijnt. de nieuwe cd van Sinikka Langeland is daarvan een indrukwekkend voorbeeld. […] een nieuw hoogtepunt in haar oeuvre […] Hoe weergaloos er ook wordt gespeeld, nergens vervalt de groep in effectbejag.
(Very rarely one experiences as a listener that the distance between you and the music disappears completely. The latest CD of Sinikka Langeland is an impressive example of this. […] A new pinnacle in her oeuvre […] Matchlessly played and never falling into sensationalism.)
Mischa Andriessen, Trouw
 
Kongenial ergänzen sich der Gesang und das Kantele-Spiel (finnische Kastenzither) von Sinikka Langeland mit den dunkel getönten Melodieschnipseln des Bratschensolisten Lars Anders Tomter und den luftigen Tenorsaxophon-Sounds von Trygve Seims, sparsam akzentuiert vom Perkussionisten Markku Ounaskari.
Mario-Felix Vogt, Stereo
 
So entfaltet diese ‘half-finnish’ Frau in vier Vokalstücken und acht stimmungsvollen Instrumental-Skizzen unter einem freien Himmel der Fantasie – noch geweitet durch die fabelhafte tontechnische Umsetzung von Jan Erik Kongshaug im Osloer Rainbow Studio – ein Panorama ihrer so süffigen wie melancholischen Kunst: klingende Visionen von unberührter Natur und der in ihr lebenden Tierwelt.
Matthias Inhoffen, Stereoplay
 
With her ensemble of now-old friends,’The half-finished heaven’ is the logical successor to her previous ECM ensemble recordings, with its even freer, more instrumental approach acting as the perfect reflection of its soaring subject matter: a suite of songs largely based around birds, flight and the ascending sky. An album of touching melancholy, haunting beauty and oftentimes completely unexpected flights of improvisational fancy from a quartet of simpatico players, Sinikka Langeland's definitive kantele remains both ‘The half-finished heaven's’ heart and spirit, along with an evocative yet ever-understated voice that may come, this time, in smaller doses...but even that decision only serves to make it all the more precious when it does.
John Kelman, All About Jazz
 
Die Anordnung der elf Stücke ist von souveräner Raffinesse geprägt. Stets treffen Langelands Kompositionen eine besonnene Balance zwischen Song und Improvisation, weshalb drei nach Texten Tomas Tranströmers verfasste Gesangsstücke sich so elegant eingliedern, dass sich das wohlige Gefühl einstellt, sowohl feine Liedersammlung als auch frei schwebendes Jazzalbum zu hören. Diese Stärke zeichnete Langelands Werk zwar seit langem aus, doch die Klasse mit der sie ihr Quartett hier leitet, frappiert erneut durch feingestaltige Variation.
Ingo J. Biermann, Nordischemusik.de
 
The album is breathtaking with quietly majestic interrogative beauty, and canny in its eloquence. It resists easy categorization and exceeds all expectations.
Thom Jurek, Allmusic.com
The Half-Finished Heaven is the fourth ECM album from Sinikka Langeland, the kantele player, singer and composer from Finnskogen, south-eastern Norway’s “Forest of the Finns”. The music she has written for the ensemble here touches on, as she says, her “whole scale of expression”. Sinnika’s highly original and self-contained oeuvre is informed, in changing degree, by folk traditions of Norway and Finland, as well as classical and contemporary music and improvisation from jazz and other sources. Each of her gifted bandmates brings his own range of colours to the music.

This time around the ratio of vocal to instrumental music has been adjusted: after Sinikka’s first ECM recording (Starflowers in 2006), producer Manfred Eicher proposed a solo kantele album, “with three songs and the remainder instrumental”. The idea had to settle for a while, but proportions have remained, even as Sinikka’s writing for the project has expanded to embrace viola and percussion - and saxophone on some pieces - as well as her own kanteles (table harps).

Much of Sinikka’s work addresses the natural world, and our place in it, and on The Half-Finished Heaven, she chose to develop music expressing “the mystery and joy of everyday encounters with animals in the forest”. For three pieces she sets texts of Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer, which in their own way speak of the transformative power of nature. “Despondency breaks off its course. / Anguish breaks off its course. / The vulture breaks off its flight. /The eager light streams out. …” The sung poems, reflecting the changing seasons, suggest a frame in which the music can unfold, with its melodic and rhythmic suggestion of animal movements, from scurryings in the undergrowth to the slow arcing of wings in the sky. Amongst the compositions, Sinikka integrates a very early and previously unrecorded piece, “The White Burden”, which she wrote in 1978, newly arranged for viola and kantele. “Together with ‘Caw of the Crane’ it has some sacral feelings connected to loss and sorrow and contributes to the space in which the creatures are flying, singing and running.”

Sinikka, who has proselytized for the work of other writers who have spoken directly of the natural world (see for instance the fine poems of Hans Børli set to music on Starflowers), says that she came late to Tranströmer, reading his Den stora gåtan (The Great Enigma) in 2004 and the Collected Poems in 2005. As she prepared the music for The Half-Finished Heaven in 2011, the news of Tranströmer’s Nobel Prize win broke. “I was so happy for him but also a little worried that it would be difficult to make contact and get permissions for setting the poems. But his wife Monica called me and I got such a warm stream of positive answers and support from them, right in the middle of their most busy time.” In Tranströmer’s writing Langeland responds to “his painting of the big questions of humanity and nature with small brushes and his pointing to the life-spirit in everything, lifting up the mystery in normal things and everyday moments. His poems can be consoling, like religious parables…”


Each of the musicians here - Lars Anders Tomter, Markku Ounaskari and Trygve Seim - has previously played with Sinikka in variety of contexts. Bringing them together, “testing out new ways of music-making presented its own challenges.” Lars Anders Tomter, one of Norway’s most distinguished classical soloists (“the giant of the Nordic viola” according to The Strad), has played Bach and folk songs with Sinikka for years (see the Maria’s Song album), but was unused to some of the freer approaches taken. Conversely, percussionist Markku Ounaskari, a resourceful improviser, was challenged by the more ‘classically’-structured pieces. “It was a playful process, putting our hearts into new experiments.” And with saxophonist Trygve Seim added, “The small melodic-motivic improvisations between us flowered even more.”

Conventionally, classical, jazz and folk players have differing rhythmic sensibilities but Sinikka notes that the group has drawn closer through the recording and the concerts around it. “The folk polsdans pulse (as on “The Magical Bird” and “Hymn To The Fly”) is very close to my feeling of it. Markku also knows how to bring some great colours from the Finnish folk traditions, including the simplicity of the shamanistic low-pitched drumming that suits this music very well, both as drama and suggestion.” As for the kantele player herself: “I feel I’m also a happy instrumentalist now, not just waiting for the vocal to come around!”

Sinikka plays a variety of kanteles on “The Half-Finished Heaven”, her 39-string concert kantele, with its capacity for longer sustained notes, played almost like a classical harp, albeit on a table, as well as 10 and 15 string folk kanteles used primarily for improvising around tonal centres, “although I play quite freely on these, too.”
YEAR DATE VENUE LOCATION
2025 July 26 tba Guddal, Norway
2025 July 27 tba Guddal, Norway
2025 July 31 Festival Ål, Norway
2025 August 21 tba Finnskogen, Norway
2025 September 19 Moss kirke Moss, Norway
2025 November 01 Kunstbanken Hamar, Norway
2025 December 11 Kulturhus Hamar, Norway