Free Music Lovers Duo
Markku Toikkanen – guitars, electronics, etc.,
Timo Pyhälä – short-scale upright bass, etc.

“We love the freedom that modern improvisation brings to probe the exciting world created by new kinds of instruments, where all sounds are equal or at least allowed. Non-idiomaticity and atonality, surprise, spontaneous structures - and the lack of structures - attract the mind to freely explore the boundaries of the subconscious, which traditional western music, in its predictability, may inhibit.”

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=jnoktWQShmM

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Wilson Tanner Smith - cello, electronics, objects, vocals
Vesa Lehko - saxophone, clarinet, objects

Wilson Tanner Smith plays improvisations rooted in a sensitive approach to the cello and its extended sounding possibilities, drawing from influences across free improvisation, free jazz, and deep listening approaches.
Vesa Lehko plays saxophones and clarinets and is interested in finding new ways of playing and making music with objects and sounds found in his own environment.
He also organizes the Rahina club in Merihaka Kylätupa.
Smith and Lehko have performed together in concerts by the Helsinki Improvisers Orchestra, but this is their first time performing as a duo.

https://wilsontannersmith.com/
https://soundcloud.com/vesa-lehko

A first time meeting of electronics and strings and whatever else = Something Else #7. Strands of folk, noise, minimalism, and free improvisation cross once again and for the first time at Kallio's friendliest bar, Musta Kissa.

Free entry, suggested donation €5-€20 (mobilepay or cash)

SOMETHING ELSE is a concert series for improvised music focused on new meetings of musicians from across Helsinki's free improv, experimental, jazz, electronic, and global music communities, hosted at Kallio's Musta Kissa bar. New small-ensemble groupings are highlighted each time, with an emphasis on surprise, difference, curiosity, energy, and connection. Hosted by Wilson Tanner Smith.

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About:

SULO KOLEHMAINEN is an improviser and a sound artist based between Helsinki and Venezia. His work usually involves field recordings, nonlinear feedback systems and often some form of collaboration.
https://eevioittinen.com/

ESSI HIRVONEN is a double bass player, composer and a folk musician. Hirvonen's double bass music is a response to the fast- paced world of today. Her music is based on simplicity and minimalism, small and slow movements, strong presence and tranquility. Her creative approach to double bass playing and the thematic nature of her music create a whole that touches.
https://essihirvonen.bandcamp.com

WILSON TANNER SMITH is a cellist, composer, improviser, and music-theatre artist currently based in Helsinki. His musical sensibility is informed by free improvisation/free jazz, ambient, DIY and found sounds, and by many cross-cultural/-genre collaborations in his former hometown, Chicago, and more recently across northern/western Europe. He frequently collaborates across music, theatre, and dance projects, and is also a member of the improvising quartet Mad Myth Science, whose debut album was released August 2023 to acclaim from The Wire, the Quietus, Chicago Reader, and Stereogum.
www.wilsontannersmith.com

New solo multimedia theatre work created in collaboration with Gaurav Singh Nijjer (New Delhi, IN)

In collaboration with Monlog Festival, Berlin, November 2025 and Osten Festival, September 2026

Something Else's 6th edition spans reeds, strings, visuals, and 3 continents in the first meeting between saxophonist Paژuh, visual artist Eevi Oittinen, and cellist Wilson Tanner Smith -- two sets of live music and visuals in Kallio's friendliest bar, Musta Kissa.

Free entry, suggested donation €5-€20 (mobilepay or cash)

About the performers
HAMIDREZA KESHVARPAJUH, or Paژuh, is an artist from Tehran, Iran, whose creative practices span a variety of roles, including saxophonist, producer, improviser, and curator. Rooted in Tehran's alternative music scene, his work resonates across a spectrum of projects, including Obad, Block Project, and Berenj Ensemble. His saxophone playing is a delicate investigation of sound phenomenology, where tone and texture converge into a deeply tactile experience. Sound emerges from the friction between breath, resonance, and the body itself, shaped by a precise sensitivity to dynamics and tonal color. His compositions intertwine influences from minimalism, progressive structures, Nu jazz, and the intricate rhythms and melodies of Middle Eastern music, balancing repetition and variation to evoke a nuanced sense of space and time. Recently, Paژuh has expanded his focus to sound art, reconfiguring the saxophone’s physicality into a fluid, malleable sonic entity. In this new phase, he explores the liminal spaces between sound and silence, using extended techniques to stretch the boundaries of musical syntax and reimagine the interrelationship between voice, instrument, and objects.
https://www.instagram.com/pajuh.works/

EEVI OITTINEN (performative drawing and projectors) is a painter and a visual artist in search of new ways to bring the languages of visual art and music together. Her recent work includes paintings inspired by visual scores and collaborations with improvised music.
https://eevioittinen.com/

WILSON TANNER SMITH is a cellist, composer, improviser, and music-theatre artist currently based in Helsinki. His musical sensibility is informed by free improvisation/free jazz, ambient, DIY and found sounds, and by many cross-cultural/-genre collaborations in his former hometown, Chicago, and more recently across northern/western Europe. He frequently collaborates across music, theatre, and dance projects, and has performed at venues including the Deutsches SchauSpielHaus, Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Estonia Kontserdisaal, Constellation (Chicago), Narva Art Center/Kreenholm Factory, Le Périscope (Lyon), and the Mullbau (Lucerne). He is also a member of the improvising quartet Mad Myth Science, whose debut album was released August 2023 to acclaim from The Wire, the Quietus, Chicago Reader, and Stereogum.
www.wilsontannersmith.com

SOMETHING ELSE is a concert series for improvised music focused on new meetings of musicians from across Helsinki's free improv, experimental, jazz, electronic, and global music communities, hosted at Kallio's Musta Kissa bar. New small-ensemble groupings are highlighted each time, with an emphasis on surprise, difference, curiosity, energy, and connection. Hosted by Wilson Tanner Smith.

Info @ Experimental Sounding Finland

In occasion of Corinna Eikmeier’s visit to Helsinki we have organised this evening of improvised music!

Corinna Eikmeier, cello
Libero Mureddu, physically modelled piano and effects
Teemu Mustonen, drums and objects
Livia Schweizer, flutes
Wilson Tanner Smith, cello
—
Address: Toinen Kerros, Nokiantie 2-4, Helsinki
Concert starting time: 7pm
Donations welcome (5-15€)
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www.corinna-eikmeier.de
www.liberomureddu.de
www.liviaschweizer.com
wilsontannersmith.com

"We have gathered here today" is a multimedia music-theatre performance rooted in gathering, expecting, presenting, projecting, waiting, and identifying. Who is this performer? Who is this audience? Why did [they] sit in [that] seat and not [that] one?

Exploding the framework of a cello recital which may or may not ever begin, its performer veers freely into psychological monologues, small talk, social media meditations, and data exhaustion. Sliding freely between the ordinary and the abstract, "we have gathered here today" playfully probes the social/systemic barriers and bridges involved in being your self, and in being strangers, here, together.

Created by Wilson Tanner Smith and Lucas Xerxes
Performance: Wilson Tanner Smith
Live Electronics: Viktor Toikkanen

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Presented as part of the 2025 Ung Nordisk Musik Festival in Helsinki

Tickets: https://fienta.com/fi/s/unm-quick-touch-up

"We have gathered here today" is a multimedia music-theatre performance rooted in gathering, expecting, presenting, projecting, waiting, and identifying. Who is this performer? Who is this audience? Why did [they] sit in [that] seat and not [that] one?

Exploding the framework of a cello recital which may or may not ever begin, its performer veers freely into psychological monologues, small talk, social media meditations, and data exhaustion. Sliding freely between the ordinary and the abstract, "we have gathered here today" playfully probes the social/systemic barriers and bridges involved in being your self, and in being strangers, here, together.

Created by Wilson Tanner Smith and Lucas Xerxes
Performance: Wilson Tanner Smith
Live Electronics: Viktor Toikkanen

//

Presented as part of the 2025 Ung Nordisk Musik Festival in Helsinki

Tickets: https://fienta.com/fi/s/unm-quick-touch-up

Marianne Sihvonen (flute, electronics) and Wilson Tanner Smith (cello, electronics)

Marianne Sihvonen (flute, electronics) and Wilson Tanner Smith (cello, electronics)

Featuring Mad Myth Science (Molly Jones, Ben Zucker, Julian Otis, Wilson Tanner Smith), Joel Garcia (flutes, poetry), and more tba

BYOB
Doors 19:00
Performance 19:30

Program info tba

Featuring Wilson Tanner Smith (cello, flutes), Joel Garcia (flutes, masks, poetry), and more

Wilson Tanner Smith with Mad Myth Science

Drummerless quartets feature on tonight’s Improvised Music Series, including a new group assembled by Christopher Dammann, and a rare appearance by Mad Myth Science, called “The next generation of Chicago Jazz” by the Quietus.

8:30 -
Christopher Dammann - bass
Robbie Lynn Hunsinger - oboe, saxophone, winds
Mabel Kwan - piano
Jason Stein - bass clarinet

9:30 - Mad Myth Science
Molly Jones - saxophones, flutes
Julian Otis - voice
Wilson Tanner Smith - cello
Ben Zucker - vibraphone, cornet
(all on additional little instruments)

$15 / $10 w/ Student ID -
Tickets Available at the Door

Mad Myth Science is the collective musical offering of Molly Jones, Julian Otis, Wilson Tanner Smith, and Ben Zucker. Their through-improvised performances present a rich cross-section of Chicago creativity, bringing experience in jazz and creative music, contemporary composition, electronics, and dance and theatrical performing arts together into a pageantry of sound and spontaneous rituals.

Their self-titled debut album, released in 2023 on Infrequent Seams, was featured in the Wire’s “Below The Radar” compilation, and described as “striking, and unlike anything else you’ll hear this year” (Phill Freeman, Stereogum).

Movement and Music Collaborations featuring:

Jayve Montgomery/Nick Turner/Cristal Sabbagh
Wilson Tanner Smith/Helen Lee
Allen Moore/Sara Zalek

More info at WIM’s website

Also with Rieko Okuda (Piano), Beat Keller (Guitar), Antti Virtaranta (Bass), David Meier (Drums)

More info at Mullbau’s website

Split bill with Fred Frith (Electric guitar, objects, pedals) and Paula Sanchez (cello, pedals)

CoPeCo Collective group show at Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre’s Black Box

More info to come…

More info to come

Facebook Event Link

Chicago-based poet, musician, and multi-media artist Joel Garcia presents a mixed set of poetry and music supported by an international band of Tallinn-based improvisers and musicians. Interdisciplinary free improv jam to follow!

20:30 start time //
Free entrance-Pay what you wish //
Drinks and snacks available for purchase at Heldeke's bar //

- Joel Garcia: STONE SOUP
Poetry and improvised music
Supported by:
Aaron Gochberg (percussion),
Sebastián Tarazona Ruiz (saxophone),
Heliä Mailiis Viirakivi (flute, voice),
Gonzalo Muruaga Olguin (electric guitar),
Wilson Tanner Smith (cello)

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- MUSIC/MOVEMENT/THEATRE FREE IMPROV JAM
"Perpetual Stew" long-form improv jam: performers are invited to join and leave the continuous set as the moment feels fit. Musicians, dancers, theatre artist, live painters, [whatever you fancy] are welcome to join this experiment in anarchic moment-making.

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- Mexican Boleros, Ballads & Rancheras performed by Joel Gacia peppered throughout the night.

Facebook Event Link

Set 1: Trio improvisations with COPECO Collective

Wilson Tanner Smith (USA/Finland)
Marianne Sihvonen (Finland)
Viktoria Sinkorova (Slovakia)
Inga Stenøien (Norway)
Matheus Souza de Freitas (Brasil)
Helena Atkin (UK)
Alicia Reyes (Spain)
Aaron Gochberg (USA)
Janine Monserat Jop-Quintero (Mexico)

Set 2: Scott L. Miller (USA)

Mustpaede Maja, Tallinn
19:00
Tickets 5/8€