Orthodox Kuopio - choir concert in Valamo Sat 18.10

Orthodox music in the history of the 250-year-old city of Kuopio

Orthodox Kuopio Choir

Conducted by cantor Sofia Laukkanen

The concert will be hosted

Total duration approx. 45 minutes.

Manual program 10 €

This year marks 250 years since the founding of the city of Kuopio. The anniversary has been celebrated in the city with numerous different events. In the midst of everything, there has also been time to reflect on what Orthodoxy has meant in the history of the celebrating city.   Judging by everything, the significance has been truly great. The Orthodox Kuopio concert at the Valamo Monastery on October 18 will demonstrate this through musical means.

The concert will feature a selection of choral works that combine Kuopio and Orthodoxy, selected from the repertoire of the Orthodox Kuopio concerts held in the Kuopio region last winter and spring. The choir includes singers from both the Kuopio Orthodox Church and other Kuopio choirs, and is led by cantor Sofia Laukkanen.

The story of Kuopio Orthodoxy begins in Valamo on Lake Ladoga and the St. Petersburg court chapel, first through the Cossack detachment that stayed in the city and the Russian Revolution, to Finland's independence and its own autonomous church, then to the war, the years of evacuation and the settlement of border Karelians, and the reconstruction period, when Kuopio became the center of the Finnish Orthodox Church for decades. Now, in the city's jubilee year of 2025, it can be stated that Kuopio has the third largest Orthodox church in the country, today with a Finnish, Savo, Karelian and international appearance.

For the first time, the broadest possible range of works by composers of Orthodox liturgical music who have influenced Kuopio over the decades or their arrangements has been brought together in one and the same concert. The list is impressive. It rightly begins with Archbishop Paavali. Many of the composers of the works are still active at the top of Finnish Orthodox church music. The program also includes some very recent works set to liturgical texts published in honor of the Kuopio anniversary.

WELCOME!