JOB

Lain Huuto’s new recording JOB brings together new works by six Finnish contemporary composers, united by linguistic mastery, powerful themes and depth of expression. The recording’s wide-ranging programme extends from surrealist contemporary French poetry to an Orthodox Lenten atmosphere and Finnish free verse.  

The album’s principal work is Jukka Linkola’s blues oratorio JOB (2024) for mixed choir, soloists and fingerstyle guitar. The work is a thematically arresting story of survival: it depicts a successful entrepreneur’s exhaustion, hallucinatory crisis and spiritual purgatory, from which the path ultimately leads back to love and life. Linkola’s idiom combines rhythm-based music, the consolation of the blues and Romantic melodiousness. Petteri Sariola’s virtuosic acoustic guitar serves as the work’s orchestra, his playing combining traditional guitar textures with percussive bass techniques in alternative tunings.  

Composer Jukka Linkola describes the background to the work:

"The blues is music of sorrow and longing, but also a musical source of consoling and warm tones. Music’s most important task is to bring feelings of love, and a sense of community and well-being, into the harsh and cold reality of everyday life."

From Lauri Viita to Paul Éluard and the Orthodox tradition

The rest of the album’s programme offers intriguing perspectives on Finnish and international choral music:

• Lauri Mäntysaari: Kolme laulua Lauri Viidan runoihin (2013) – Commissioned for Lain Huuto’s fifth-anniversary concert, the suite blossoms from the tense diminished tertian chords of Pohjan satakieli into the playful dream world of Kukunor and ends with the understated gravity of the poem Onni.  

• Mikko Sidoroff: Nu firar himmelens makter (Nyt taivasten voimat, 2018) – The premiere recording of the winner of the Bel Canto composition competition, setting the culmination of the Orthodox Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts. The restrained, inward-looking Lenten atmosphere, or "bright sadness", bursts forth into the Hallelujah of praise that concludes the work.  

• Mikko Nisula: Poésies lutéciennes op. 54 (2023) – A French-inflected suite setting surrealist texts by Paul Éluard, in which instrumentally swift urban tableaux alternate with impressionistically colourful harmonic nuances.  

• Johannes Tiusanen: Talviyö (2023) – A work based on a text by Katri Vala, in which the composer depicts cold and the crackling of frost through close intervals and overtone series of leading notes.  

• Mia Makaroff: Justitia (2019) – Built on the contrast between an ancient liturgical text by Cyprian and a poem by W.H. Auden, the work reflects on the eternal themes of justice and conscience.  

Composer Johannes Tiusanen describes composing temperatures:

"I made the cold crackle in close intervals and in the overtone series of leading notes alternating in different octaves, and at the culmination I fashioned a sun as cold as possible, so quiet that it is terrifying."

A musically ambitious mixed choir and outstanding guest artists

Founded in 2009, Lain Huuto is a mixed choir comprising lawyers and law students, conducted since its foundation by Master of Music Paavo Hyökki. An award-winner at international choral competitions (including Canta al Mar, the Tampere Vocal Music Festival and Kaunas Cantat), the choir is known for its wholehearted commitment and ambitious approach.  

Fingerstyle guitar virtuoso Petteri Sariola creates an exceptional sonic pillar for the work. Creating the sound world of an entire ensemble, complete with percussive bass, on his steel-string acoustic guitar without backing tracks, Sariola brings seamless swing and depth to the work.  

The recording was made in two acoustically outstanding settings: the acoustic choral works were recorded in Karjalohja Church under the direction of Ilkka "Ilu" Herkman, while the guitar sections and the JOB oratorio were recorded at Mimix studio by Jyri Sariola.