We're getting closer to Sibelius' birthday (8th December) and in every part of the world people going on celebrating this 150th anniversary. Staying in Europe we bring to your attention two special November's events. In Finland the historical Sibelius Academy (founded in 1892 and dedicated to Sibelius since 1939) is working to an amazing show! Almost in the same years of Tapiola, Sibelius wrote an incidental music on The Tempest (Myrsky in Finnish) by W. Shakespeare (again starting with 'S'). Two Stars of Art from different periods and culture seem to walk together in more than 1 hour of music. And it's for both of them one of the last big work of their artistic life. Maybe they are closer than we could imagine, but to prove it go to Helsinki and bring a ticket (or more than one) for Myrsky at the Helsinki Music Centre on the 21st November. On the stage actors from the Theatre Academy and the Sibelius Academy Symphony Orchestra, Choir and Vocalists conducted by Tuomas Hannikainen, under the direction of Ville Sandqvist. The music is colorful and rich of instrumental effects: Sibelius wrote it in 1925-26 and the first performance was in Copenhagen, but he was not there. The first time he heard it  was in Helsinki in 1927 in the definitive version with 35 episodes. Than he collected 19 of them in 2 Suites for piano. The music speaks for itself: it has something so special, tragic, mystic, comic, grotesque and cruel as Shakespeare's characters, lost in a desert island, but the upcoming performance is announced as something really spectacular with many stage effects. However it's not so frequent to see it in the Concert Halls calendars, and it's not so usual to listen to Shakespeare's verses in Finnish!

But now we could reach the poet's homeland for the second event we're going to talk about: the opening of a new Orchestra! Yes NEW that's so hopeful in a difficult period for culture, when many orchestras are forced to close. Sòn (again 'S') means "sound" or "music" in old English, but the concept has no age. This new ensemble wants to collect under this name many aspects of the world of music, being the only professional orchestra based in the big city of Southampton. It is young, flexible and able to play as a big symphonic or a small chamber orchestra. Its goal is to work together with dancers, actors, film makers and to dedicate many concerts (or we should say 'performances') to the children. It collaborates with James Mayhew, illustrator and author of many children stories, awarded by The NY Times. That's the educational sòn with concerts in the schools, workshops and shows especially thought for the youth. Why we're talking about it? That's easy: Sibelius Unwrapped is the title of the opening concert. A new-born orchestra dedicates its first sounds to the finnish composer. On the 29th November in the Turner Sims Concert Hall of Southampton with as special guest the pianist David Owen Norris professor at the Royal College, the Royal Academy and Head of Keyboard at Southampton University. The conductor (and artistic director of sòn) is Robin Browning, teacher at Southampton University, who worked with Royal Philharmonic, Danish Radio, St Petersburg Festival and many other orchestras around the world. He is "convinced that the city, and the south of the UK as a whole, is not only ready for something like són, but desperately in need of it,” Using in another way Shakespeare words that we're such stuff as dreams are made on we think that without dreams and imagination we'd loose the good things that happen in our world so we wish to all of you many of these dreams and to Robin Browning great success for his creature born from a dream and now coming true.