Anne-Mari Kivimäki Anne-Mari Kivimäki has been a fixture on the Finnish music scene for a number of years, an accordionist known for playing what she terms trance folk as a solo artist, as well as being part of experimental outfits like Suistamon Sähkö and the Anne-Mari Kivimäki Ensemble. Known as both composer and performer, she spreads her wings a little with this album, inviting an international cast of performers, and recording in Iceland and Estonia, as well as much closer to home in Finland.
This is an album with a purpose, built around the wartime notebooks of one of her relatives. Digging into them and discovering his experiences led her to editing a book based on the entries, coinciding with an exhibition about them. They inform so much of what’s here, perhaps best summed up in the song “Tunteet/Feelings,” about having to leave with only pictures and the memories they contain. It’s a sorrowful piece of work that manages to be curiously beautiful, a companion to the opening “Hyräily,” about returning to a home that’s no longer there. In contrast, “Maalo” arrives with whirling, hypnotic intensity, the simple repeated accordion phrases building and growing to create that trance-like feeling.
Parallels between Karelia in 1945 and modern Ukraine – both invaded by Russia – surface on “Muistellen,” which features the Polish/Ukrainian vocal duo DagaDana. It’s a piece where the emotions have free rein over the music, stirring, compelling and wonderful. The other name guests, the Estonian duo Puuluup, whose talharpas and voices combine with Kivimäki to create floating, atmospheric music on “Veeruur.”
Yet the most moving piece on Kotiin is also the simplest, the unaccompanied voice of Taito Hoffrén on a commissioned work called “Ilon Wirsi,” that closes the album. It’s perhaps fitting that his leathery, worn voice is given the last word; Hoffrén was her collaborator on the album and died last year (Kotiin is dedicated to him). It’s another step in a glowing music career, with Kivimäki showing that she keeps improving as both composer and artist and that the umbrella of Finnish folk spreads marvellously wide.
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