Margit Tuokko, Helsinki

Alas I won't make it to Helsinki this weekend (so this blogpost shout-out will have to do) to applaud the 65th birthday of my dear colleague and friend, the Finnish soprano Margit Tuokko. She's going to celebrate in style with a concert in which she will sing solo, and with her students, choirs she has tutored, colleagues from her professional life, church choirs, and who knows what else. In my experience, if you mention any Finnish musician or singer's name to Margit she knows them, and all their family, so I expect the concert hall at The Helsinki Conservatory of Music will be very full indeed for this marvellous occasion.

I'm deeply honoured that my own work King Harald's Saga will figure in the programme. Margit has championed this 'grand opera in three acts for solo soprano' for many, many years, and the fact that she's still singing it brings to mind the extraordinary career of King Harald's original dedicatee, Jane Manning.

This happens also to be a historic week for King Harald's Saga itself, in that the publishers Wise Music are preparing for the first time to publish a printed edition of the music. Up to now, singers have learned the piece from a facsimile of my original manuscript (published by Novello & Co soon after its 1979 premiere, and I still bless them for doing that.) Recently however, I picked up the vibe that my handwritten score, formerly thought charming or 'heritage', was maybe becoming alien to younger singers. Preparing to feel rather sad about this, I've in fact been excited by an early glance at the proofs, and perhaps a new era for this surprisingly long-lived 'experimental' composition.

PICTURED: from Notre-Dame, Paris, photo from Kate Johnson