null Voice box: “Larynx” “Der Kehlkopf” “Kurkunpää”



WE LIKE TO MAKE SERIOUS, academic boxes for the human voice, for pieces written for this human voice, and for the people who write these pieces.

Voice Box opens these boxes, analyses them and draws a moustache on them. Defying all the decent definitions, this post-internet Singspiel and the role-play concert lecture laughs last, because the joke is on itself.

The funniest and most touching thing is the human voice. As the final box explodes like piñata (orange like Trump) even the coloratura soprano becomes an actual human being: “I’m not my voice type, I’m me!”

In Voice Box the roles are also in continuous flow. The composer – me – isn’t just a composer and director. I am also doing doctoral studies and making an analysis of the vocal possibilities of the voice of the coloratura soprano Mia Heikkinen. Somehow these two are mashed into a role of Professor M.H., a nosy Besserwisser with a true love for voice and the inability to say the word “box”.

Playing along is also the pianist Maija Parko (we have been trying to hint to her not to do her clownerythingies, but we can’t promise anything) and the sleepy laboratory assistant, who seems to fall asleep in positions better suited to circus performers and does this even while accompanying the crazy professor with the flute and voice.

There is a lot to learn from Voice Box if you are an overachiever. But you can also just come for the sing-along or the groovy choreography. You would be surprised, what crazy facial expressions and movements singers make when they forget themselves. And of course we found the silliest ones from the recordings.

If you don’t come, the four of us will do the whole sing-along thing and we’ll die of laughter. So it is really up to you.

Composer Miika Hyytiäinen: Concept, Composition, Libretto
Singer Mia Heikkinen: Voice analysis on the video/“Prof. M.H.”
Flutist/Soprano/Circus Artist Jacintha Darmström: Laboratory assistant
Pianist Maija Parko: Keyboards

Premiere: Thu 18 May at 19:00 Black Box, Helsinki Music Centre.

The Voice Map method used in Voice Box will be demonstrated at the Research Pavilion in Venice on Sat 17 June.

Writer Miika Hyytiäinen is a doctoral student in the Sibelius Academy DocMus Doctoral school.


This column has originally been published in the May issue of Uniarts Helsinki's IssueX magazine, this time a special edition dedicated to the Research Pavilion.