Lain Huuto: JOB

Versatile Finnish Contemporary Choral Music and the Comfort of the Blues

Lain Huuto’s new release JOB brings together premiere works by six contemporary Finnish composers, united by linguistic craftsmanship, compelling themes, and expressive depth. The broad-ranging program spans from surrealist French modern poetry to Orthodox Lenten contemplation and free-form Finnish lyricism.

The centerpiece of the recording is Jukka Linkola’s blues oratorio JOB (2024) for mixed choir, soloists, and fingerstyle guitar. Thematically, the work is a poignant narrative of survival: it portrays a successful entrepreneur suffering from severe psychological trauma, psychotic hallucinations, and emotional burnout, whose harrowing journey ultimately leads back to love, family, and redemption. Linkola’s musical language fuses rhythmic vitality, romantic lyrical expression, and the comforting warmth of the blues. Petteri Sariola’s acoustic guitar serves as the work's entire orchestra, combining traditional fingerstyle textures with a dynamic percussion-and-bass technique in alternative tunings.

From Lauri Viita to Paul Éluard and Orthodox Traditions

The album's accompanying program offers illuminating perspectives on Finnish and international choral repertoire:

• Lauri Mäntysaari: Three Songs Composed to Poems by Lauri Viita (2013) – Commissioned for Lain Huuto’s 5th-anniversary concert, the cycle transitions from the tense diminished third chords of Pohjan satakieli (The Nightingale of the North) to the playful dreamscape of Kukunor and the understated, solemn weight of Onni (Happiness).

• Mikko Sidoroff: Nu firar himmelens makter (Now the Powers of Heaven, 2018) – First recording of the winning work from the Bel Canto composition competition. Setting the climax of the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, its subdued Orthodox Lenten atmosphere of "sober contemplation" opens into a triumphant concluding Hallelujah.

• Mikko Nisula: Poésies lutéciennes Op. 54 (2023) – An impressionistic five-movement cycle set to early surrealist poems by Paul Éluard, alternating instrumentally agile urban vignettes with rich harmonic nuance.

• Johannes Tiusanen: Talviyö (Winter Night, 2023) – A setting of Katri Vala’s poetry, evoking bone-chilling frost through tight intervals and alternating leading-tone upper harmonics.

• Mia Makaroff: Justitia (2019) – Juxtaposing an ancient text by Cyprianus with a poem by W.H. Auden, the work explores timeless questions of conscience, fairness, and justice.

FORMAT: CD