Thursday 29 .10 at 6 pm at Arkadia: Ö Zörni / A Journey, a concert by Mikael Joonatan

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Dear friend of Arkadia,

You are invited to Ö Zörni / A Journey, a concert by Mikael Joonatan, on Thursday 29 .10 at 6 pm at Arkadia (Nervanderinkatu 11)


Warm regards,




Concert by Mikael Joonatan

Mikael Joonatan is a Finnish pianist, composer, singer-songwriter and interdisciplinary artist. He spent 6 years living abroad in France and Portugal. Last year he lived alone with piano in a small Portuguese village called Almocageme, located between green magical hills of Sintra and the powerful Atlantic ocean. It was a year of deep loneliness, artistic crisis, spirituality, pianism and breath-taking landscapes.

His musical background is in classical piano, song writing, improvisation and composing music for theatre and dance pieces. In his solo gigs he uses piano, piano strings and voice. The time in the village opened his musical interest towards more abstract expression. His pianism got strongly influenced by nature’s textures and movement. He stopped using lyrics and started to use non-language. He got obsessed of the idea that music should reflect the pure nature and the abstract beauty of life around us.

While some new worlds opened to him through this obsession, he started to question the value of his old works. He almost stopped ”traditional” song writing thinking songs are too concrete, personal, superficial and obvious. While questioning all the previous works, he lost his musical intuition and got quite deep into artistic identity crisis. He kept playing a gig every week in Lisbon.

The village, its community and the surroundings, were lovely and he felt more and more home. But living alone, working alone, and struggling with artistic questions alone made him go crazy. Finally, in October 2014, he decided it’s time to say goodbye to the Adraga beach and the friends of the village. Two months later he moved back to Finland to find his roots. The change was like coming from another, foggy, sunny, dreamy world to some previous reality that felt also unreal. The change was confusing.

Soon he started to discover some old roots that made him feel better and more home again: Finnish nature, people and contemporary dance. But his musical roots were hard to be located as he’s always been balancing in between different styles and traditions.

Then, very recently, he realized that while reaching towards the abstract beauty, he had actually forbidden himself more traditional song writing, which is something he’s been enjoying doing since a teenager. So for quite a while he had denied himself something that has always been very essential part of his musical self. When he realized this he also realized the actual value, essentiality and beauty of song writing. He thought that it needs to be woken up, right now.
So, therefore the concert of Arkadia will be dedicated to going back to his song writing roots. Mikael will be performing different songs born during these past 6 years in different places. From Parisian suburbs to the forests of Vantaa, from the waves of Atlantic Ocean to creeks in Lapland’s wilderness.

No other place than Arkadia would be better to do this, as it is in a way his home venue that has been part of his performing path since the beginning of the bookshop.