Composer Lauri Porra was commissioned for a piece with as many basses as possible.
There are voices that are listened to. Then there are sounds that are felt in the body.
Lauri Take the stairs tense.
“Very much.”
No one knows yet what it sounds like when more than 60 bass guitarists play together. The performance venue is also exceptional: the steps of the Helsinki Cathedral.
In addition to bass guitarists, double bass players and bass trombonists and players of tuba and bass drums will also take to the stairs. And bass singers.
The title of the work is BASS. It’s Porra’s composition, a commissioned work for Helsinki’s festive weeks.
Porra is used to composing for different ensembles. But not for this one. Can all the players even read sheet music?
From what BASS sound when it is played? The group of performers of more than a hundred people can only be assembled a day before the concert.
“You have to guess a little.”
Lauri Porra is a 46-year-old composer, the bassist of the metal band Stratovarius and the artistic director of the Vantaa entertainment orchestra. In the most watched movie of the year Myrskyluoto Maija music composed by him plays.
He is also by Jean Sibelius great-grandson and conductor Dalia Stasevka spouse.
He started playing the bass as a teenager. Until then, the instrument was the cello.
Later, he found that the role of bassist suited him. The role of observer and supporter.
“That’s why it’s good for the soloists to be on the show, while the bass does the undemanding work and supports.”
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“There will be a trance-like state.”
When the neighbor plays music too loud, what penetrates the wall structures is the bass.
The sound is without vibration. Wave motion. Bass frequencies are low and slow. They are felt in the body.
Porra says, they have felt especially powerful, for example, in music clubs in Berlin, when bass driven machine music has been played really loud. Or listening to bass driven Jamaican music.
“There will be a trance-like state.”
I guess that’s what people have been aiming for since the beginning of time by drumming.
“A connection to something unknown.”
There is something big and deep about bass sounds. Like a thunderclap.
The bass is the granite on which the other sounds of the composition are built. Background sound. Bedrock.
Wagner and Mahler were trying to figure out how to get more low frequencies into their symphonies. More and more low-pitched instruments were developed for the orchestra. But it was only later that a really strong bass sound could be created. The era of electronic music began, amplifiers came.
When a young man buys a car stereo, he wants more bass.
“We live in the year 2024 and everything is modern and great,” says Porra. “Still, many people have a burning inner longing for spaces where the bass plays as loud as possible.”
Staircase chose the bass guitarists Bass-to the work based on the fake tapes. There were many hundreds of them. He listened to everything.
It felt great that so many people got excited.
Some bass guitar professionals joined. But also many skilled bass players, whom Lauri Porra had not heard of before.
Lauri Porra’s composition BASS will be performed on the Night of the Arts on August 15 at 10 p.m. in Helsinki’s Senate Square. The visual appearance of the piece was designed by Joonas Tikkanen.
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