Summer Concerts 2026: Kantele Kreeta - The Life of Kreeta Haapasalo in Words and Music

This concert surveys the music of Kreeta Haapasalo's era - a kantele player and folk singer whose own songs and compositions are performed alongside popular melodies from the 1800s. The Kaustinen fiddlers' participation in the programme reflects the fact that Kreeta's first instrument was the violin.

Kreeta Haapasalo dictated her memoirs to folklorist Lilli Lilius in Varkaus in 1887. The memoirs were first published in 1889 in the journal Home and Society and are also included in the book Kreeta Haapasalo, Icon and Human, edited by Ilkka Kolehmainen and Vesa Tapio Valo.

A large ensemble of Kaustinen performers presents both Kreeta's life story as Finland's most celebrated female artist of her time and her journey across the entire Grand Duchy of Finland - reaching as far as St. Petersburg and Stockholm (as noted in professor Heikki Laitinen's article in the aforementioned book). Kreeta's own narratives from the pages of her memoirs are woven into the performance. Mauno Järvelä, who designed the programme, lives about 200 metres from where Kreeta's birthplace once stood.

Organiser: Jyväskylä Parish | [email protected] | 050 3800 608