Books from Finland - A literary journal of writing from and about Finland.

Kimasen lento
[Flight of the Humblebee]
Helsinki: Teos, 2013. 447 pp., ill.
ISBN 978-951-851-488-9
€ 28.40, hardback

Professor Seppo Kimanen (born 1949) is a cellist who has served as the director of the Helsinki Festival, held arts management positions in London and Japan, and in 1970 founded a summer music festival in Kuhmo, a small town in northern Finland, for which he continued to provide inspiring, innovative leadership for 35 years. The Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival has gone on to achieve international renown, attracting many celebrated performers. The success of the Kuhmo festival has encouraged the establishment of similar festivals in other locations. Kimanen has been supported in his work by his wife, the Japanese violinist Yoshiko Arai. In his lively, humorous musical memoir with a punning title – Kimanen’s surname is similar to kimalainen, the Finnish word for bumblebee – Kimanen gives a colourful account of the stages of his career in Kuhmo and elsewhere, including his work in the world of classical music and the important figures and leading performers he has been able to bring to Finland to perform.
Translated by Ruth Urbom