Welcome to Beyond the Notes!

I was going to start a Substack letter last spring already, but it was one of those things that just felt easier to keep on not doing. Now, however, life has provided me a convenient new start in a new country, and I don’t see a better time to start. I have also grown increasingly frustrated with the lack of space to think on Instagram, and have started to long for a place where I can write in longer form and think more slowly. So here we are, I’m excited that you are reading this! I think this letter will be about my London life, inspirational women and different aspects of being a performer, but we’ll see. These texts will obviously go beyond the notes I play, but also beyond the notes I write every day on my Notes app. That is truly an interesting mess, but some good thoughts come from it, too!

If you know me in real life or through instagram you’ll know that I’m a violist and that I spend a lot of time thinking about and trying to fix some of the inequality issues in the world of classical music. What I want to see is a more equal and diverse music world, where more voices from the past and present are heard, and more flourishing musicians and artists can share their art.

I have founded a festival focusing on music composed by women with my friends back in 2016 (@kokonainen.musequal), and I have studied gender studies, positive psychology and professional coaching so that I can be more aware of both the problems musicians face, and possible solutions. And through all this I have played viola in all sorts of settings, from earliest to newest music, from the biggest concert halls to rural churches and an old mine, from big opera and symphony orchestras to intimate chamber groups and interdisciplinary projects. And I’m trying to use myself as an example. I’m trying to program music from a more sustainable and diverse perspective and to have healthier habits and thought processes when it comes to this job.

As for the new start, I moved to London a couple of weeks ago to study a Master of Science degree in Performance Science at the Royal College of Music. On top of that I’m researching some British composer women, with whom I have been obsessed for some time now, so it all comes together very beautifully. The only thing left to do now is - to write.

What should I write about my first weeks in London? About the feeling of finally being in the right place? The tall ancient trees in Hyde Park on the way to the Royal College? About the lovely women I have already gotten to know a little better on my course? The portrait of the composer Lady Mary Dering in the college entrance hall? The weird half-life when you’re not a tourist anymore but not quite settled in eitherk?

I could write about anything really, and that’s the thing. This city has a way of opening my mind and my creativity in a way that no other city has.

Anyway, I would want to start from the beginning, but I don’t know what the beginning is.

I’ve always felt a strange sense of belonging here, since the first time I set foot in London when I was fourteen. Is that the beginning? Or sneaking out to a neighbourhood pub during a highschool choir trip? Or when I almost ended up here when I was 23, for an Erasmus term, but chose Hamburg instead?

And then there was a Christmas holiday, when we had been watching all the classics (BBC Pride and Prejudice, The Holiday, Bridget Jones’ Diary...) and I couldn’t take my eyes off the UK map. That might have been at least a beginning. After that I planned a trip to London, Bath, Oxford and North Yorkshire, and then the trips kept coming. A lovely summer concert in Hertfordshire, archive study in Aldeburgh and London, a winter holiday in Devon, six weeks of hiking in the South West.

And now, when I arrived a few weeks ago, it already felt like I had come home. I know the grocery stores, the tube lines, the bookstores, but there’s still so much to discover. That famous Samuel Johnson quote: “When a man is tired of London, he’s tired of life.” And even though I am tired after the move and all the bureaucracy, so tired, I don’t think I can ever be tired of this place.

Every morning I have to remind myself that I live here now. That the ache I felt everytime I had to leave, would be gone for quite some time. My neighbourhood is green and peaceful, which is something that a split city girl/country girl like me appreciates in a city like this. There’s a train directly to the British Library, which has become like a sanctuary for me, there’s Hyde Park right around the corner from the college. There’s a neighbourhood bookstore. I will be just fine.

Even more fine now, as I get to share this adventure, and some past and future adventures with all of you. Welcome to my world beyond the notes we play!