Melody Forest: Sibelius for children

“Oh, can you hear the smell of nature!” was something Sibelius may have exclaimed when he would walk through the garden of his Ainola home. The music of our national composer was born of nature, moods, stories and moments of inspiration.

“Oh, can you hear the smell of nature!” was something Sibelius may have exclaimed when he would walk through the garden of his Ainola home. The music of our national composer was born of nature, moods, stories and moments of inspiration.

In the Melody Forest concert, cellist Jussi Makkonen and pianist Nazig Azezian paint a vivid picture of the life and compositions of the Finnish national composer Jean Sibelius. In 2015, Makkonen’s and Azezian’s book Melody Forest, illustrated by Katri Kirkkopello, and the record recorded in Ainola were distributed to every primary school in Finland with the support of the Ministry of Education. The concert will take you on a journey through time in the world of Sibelius: his grandchildren will share memories of their late grandfather “Janne-pappa”, Finlandia will echo through Koli’s national landscapes and Souvenir will play on the journey to Europe.

Cellist Jussi Makkonen and pianist Nazig Azezian’s Sibelius-themed school concerts have reached hundreds of thousands of children in Finland and abroad. Makkonen and Azezian have given concerts in Finland in more than 2,000 schools and daycare centres, in Finnish schools in the United States, Italy, Belgium, Austria and Dubai as well as in local schools in Sweden, Norway, Turkey and the United States, bringing classical music closer to young listeners. In 2019, Makkonen and Azezian were awarded the Inkku Prize for outstanding music education work in Finnish schools by Concert Centre Finland.

In 2022 and 2023, Makkonen and Azezian gave a Melody Forest stage performance at the Sibelius Festival in Lahti, invited by conductor Dalia Stasevska. Lahti City Theatre actor Tapani Kalliomäki narrated the theatrical performance.