Tove Festival – a whole day seminar about Tove Jansson – will be arranged in Finland for the first time on September, 18th. Last year ́s Tove Festival in Stockholm was a talked-about and sold out success, which will now come to Svenska Teatern in an adaptation for the Finnish audience. The tickets are released on Thursday, June 3rd, at 12 p.m. via Svenska Teatern's ticket system and at lippu.fi.
Watch the event live here:
Tove Jansson, the visual artist, writer, poet, playwright and creator of series had a courage that can be seen in her entire production and private life. She created art that continues to inspire writers and artists today. We naturally feel that she should have a festval dedicated to her life´s work in her home town!
The host Christoffer Strandberg will together with invited writers, musicians and Tove experts, take the audience on a dazzling visual journey of archival material of Tove and the people who knew her. We will discuss subjects like the queer aspects of Tove´s art, take a look at her continuing impact on the Finnish litterature of today, get an insight into the music created around her cultural legacy and take a deep dive into the extensive academical research around Tove´s body of art. Guests include Alma Pöysti, Pirkko Saisio, Anni Sinnemäki, Mark Levengood, Kaj Korkea-aho, Tuula Karjalainen, Sirke Happonen and Kasimir Sandbacka. There will also be musical performances by Lauri Porra (Stradovarius) and Emma Klingenberg (Tove – visdiktaren).
Tove Festival takes place 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on September, 18th at Svenska Teatern. The programme on stage is in Finnish and Swedish. A limited amount of tickets are sold through Svenska Teatern (in Swedish). The tickets for Tove Festival in Stockholm sold out fast, so be sure to book your ticket already now to one of the most awaited cultural events this fall. Tove Festival is arranged by Moomin Characters in co-operation with Svenska Teatern.
Tove festival program
11.00 Welcoming words by host Christoffer Strandberg
11.15 Discussion on Tove Jansson´s impact on Finnish literature today (in Finnish)
”Gone is Moomin, gone is the rapture” wrote the reviewer in Dagens Nyheter in her review of Tove Jansson´s The Summer Book in 1972. The reader was taken by surprise by the Tove who had left Moominvalley to write for adults. The author Pirkko Saisio, deputy mayor Anni Sinnemäki and publisher Touko Siltala discuss Tove Jansson´s prose and the impact her books have had on Finnish literature.
Moderator: Touko Siltala
Guests: Pirkko Saisio, Anni Sinnemäki
12.00 Tove Jansson – the songwriter (in Swedish and Finnish)
Emma Klingenberg sings songs from ”Tove Jansson – visdiktaren”, her concert performance of songs with lyrics written by Tove Jansson.
Emma Klingenberg, singer, Kristian Nyman, piano, Heikki Pohto, wind musical instrument, Sampo Sundström, guitar, bass, cello.
12.15 ”An expedition into new domains of simplicity and beauty” (in Swedish)
How did Tove Jansson deal with questions of gender and sexuality in her art? What kind of insights can a queer reading of her work provide us? A discussion on the queer aspects in Tove Jansson´s work with author Kaj Korkea-aho, host and author Mark Levengood and lecturer in literature and critic Mia Österlund.
Moderator: Kira Schroeder
Guests: Mark Levengood, Kaj Korkea-aho, Mia Österlund
13.15 Lunch
14.45 Discussion on Tove Jansson´s impact on society and the research made on her work (in Finnish)
Finns see themselves in the stories of Moominvalley. Is it however possible to approach it all from a different viewpoint? Has Tove Jansson changed Finnish society, has her work impacted our values and our way of thinking? Has Tove´s way of thinking freely made some things more allowed in Finnish society? The academic research around Tove and her body of work is a pretty new phenomenon in Finland, what is that interests the researchers within this field right now?
Moderator: Keiko Morishita
Guests: Sirke Happonen, Tuula Karjalainen, Kasimir Sandbacka
15.45 Alma Pöysti reads Tove Jansson´s letters from Eva Konikoff (in Finnish)
Tove Jansson corresponded all of her adult life with Eva Konikoff, who had emigrated to the US at the beginning of the Second World War. Her letters are brought to life on stage, read by Alma Pöysti, the actor who has played Tove Jansson both on film and on the stage at Svenska Teatern. During the reading, we get to see Eva Konikoff´s photos from Harlem and Manhattan.
16.15 Break
17.00 The Sound of Moomins (in Finnish)
What does Moominvalley sound like and how do you create music based on Tove Jansson´s multifaceted texts and illustrations? The composers Lauri Porra and Samuli Kosminen talk to the singer and actor Emma Klingenberg.
Moderator: Nanette Forsström
Guests: Lauri Porra, Emma Klingenberg, Samuli Kosminen
18.00 Seasons in Moominvalley
The internationally recognized basist and composer Lauri Porra has spent the last year composing music inspired by the Moomin stories and illustrations. For the first time ever, he performs a selection of this music live together with his musicians. Lauri Porra, bass, Hanna Hohti, viola, Markus Hohti,cello, Antti Kujanpää, piano, Kasmir Uusitupa, violin.
18.20 Closing words (in Finnish)
Sophia Jansson, artistic director at Moomin Characters, in conversation with Christoffer Strandberg
Exclusive archive material like interviews with Tove Jansson and the people that knew her will also be shown.
The tickets are released on Thursday, June 3rd, at 12 p.m. via Svenska Teatern’s ticket system and at lippu.fi.
Download press image here. More press material can be found here.
The event (in Finnish) will also be live-streamed:
Blasphemy in Tove Jansson’s literature – and other rare treats from the first Tove festival in Stockholm
Blasphemy in Tove Jansson’s literature: one of the theme discussed in the first Tove Festival. Listen to this whole conversation and others.