60 years old | Risto Juvose, known as a concert organizer, has a project going on all the time: “Just lying down would be a nightmare”

Risto Juvonen is known as a long-time influencer in the music industry, a concert promoter and a boxer by Eva Wahlström as a coach in the last years of his professional career. During the last couple of years, however, Juvonen’s attention has been drawn elsewhere: the construction project of a second apartment in Kirkkonummi.

Now it’s okay to pose in front of the newly completed house. Juvonen built a boomerang-shaped wooden house on the seashore, the roof of the huge terrace is pierced by firs and pines that have grown on the plot for decades.

This cannot be bought by clicking on the ready-made holiday list.

The building Juvonen hired as an architect Tuomas Silvennoinen, who is, among other things, the award-winning main designer of the new main building of Jätkäsaari’s West Terminal. The vision of the boomerang is Juvonen’s.

“I need projects. Just laying there… it would be a nightmare. In the traditional sense, I don’t think I’ll ever retire,” says Juvonen.

Juvose would have had the financial opportunity to retire for twenty years. Juvose, who grew up in Vantaa’s Simonkylä and worked for a couple of years at the Wiima bus body factory, became a multi-millionaire in his early forties when he sold the concert agency he owned, Welldone, to the US event industry giant Live Nation.

As one however, Juvonen considers his best achievements to be that he went to a trade college and evening high school in his early twenties – and completed the high school curriculum in one year.

His economics studies at the University of Helsinki were interrupted when he drifted off to organize concerts. The punctual guy had a use in the music business, where “business” was still a curse word for many in the 1980s. In the 1990s and 2000s, Juvonen grew concert activities and brought all possible star performers to Finland From Madonna to Bruce Springsteen and About Michael Jackson to the Rolling Stones.

There are plenty of stories about stars, even though Juvonen usually stays in the background and does not pose for group photos with the artists.

“Recently deceased Tina Turner ended their tour in 2000 with two concerts at Finnair Stadium in Helsinki. At their request, we organized a closing party. The manager wanted to introduce me to Turner, who said with a twinkle in his eye: ‘So young – I hate you!’ You wouldn’t say anymore: now I’m the same age as he was then.”

Juvonen turns 60 on Friday, July 7.

Idleness Juvonen tried it after leaving his job as CEO and head promoter of Live Nation in 2010. Traveled, tended the garden and practiced boxing.

“Boxing is the only thing I never get tired of.”

For example, gardening has since been left behind. The yard of the Kirkkonummi house has been left in its natural state.

However, Juvonen has noticed that old things may start to interest him again. Through his own company, he acted as a promoter at Rammstein’s concerts in Finland and the Baltics recently.

“It was fun to have my hands in clay for a long time. Things went through me, that hasn’t happened in years.”

There is promise of a continuation, although Juvonen no longer plans to organize year-round concert activities. Or that he will return to his day job at Live Nation, where he went as a consultant and chairman of the board after his sabbatical.

I went when asked once – and the feeling of being idle was boring.

“

“Boxing is the only thing I never get tired of.”

CORONAVIRUS SUMMER 2020 Juvonen left Live Nation again. Appropriate timing, because since then there have been enough difficulties in the events industry. When the pandemic was over, Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine closed the route for performers arriving in Finland to Russia. Among others, the Rolling Stones, Madonna and Springsteen have skipped the Finnish gigs on their last tours.

However, Juvonen is particularly saddened by the fact that the Helsinki hall, known as the Hartwall arena, stands unused due to its Russian ownership and sanctions against the hall.

“It’s a bad thing for the whole of Helsinki, when the millions in income from the events are missed. It should be possible to enact some law that allows the hall to be put into use temporarily.”

In the arena have seen hundreds of events organized by Juvonen, from monster cars to dinosaur shows, musicals, concerts – and boxing matches.

Thanks to boxing, Juvonen himself has been in the limelight. In his time, he won the youth Finnish championship twice. And the coaching of the last years of Eva Wahlström’s professional career took Juvosen, whom Wahlström calls “Cruel”, to the ringside of the World Cup matches in places like Las Vegas and New York.

“It was a great experience. My main role was to bring something new to the last years of Eva’s career. His style became more active and attacking.”