The Starry Skies

The first striking memory I have of moving to Finland was the nights… or should I say, the absence of them.

I arrived there at the beginning of june, the longest day of the year was near.

And days were literally endless; the sun didn´t set in that area of the world during mid-summer.

It wasn´t until late August that I started seeing dark nights again, at least for a couple of hours. By the end of September, nights were already quite long.

And, it was around then that I acquired what is now my second most striking memory of Finland: the discovery by chance of a set of piano pieces that was to mark me forever.

It happened like this…

My first piano teacher in Finland was a true master, Lauri Väinmaa. Of course, I didn´t know that yet since I didn´t know him beforehand.

So, before meeting him, I looked for whatever recordings he had available (in a non-spotify, non-youtube era).

Just before our first lesson, I found an album called “The Starry Sky Cycle”, with piano pieces by an unknown composer for me called Urmas Sisask, performed by my soon-to-be teacher Lauri Väinmaa.

Turns out that this album is a true wonder, a masterpiece. It is because of Väinmaa´s playing for sure, but also because of that set of miniature piano pieces that were inspired each by a different constellation.

Since nights are very dark (and very unpolluted) in Finland, I experienced for the first time in my life the beauty of the starry sky and the universe, and these pieces magically came into my life just at that time.

They mean the universe to me, if you know what I mean ;)

I´m going to share one of the pieces with you, although I recommend listening to the full album (available on YouTube, Spotify, etc.).

This piece is nothing short of magical, just like any one of the 29 in the “Northern Skies” series. Click here to listen to one of the pieces.

In less than a week, I´ll release the first volume of a set of piano compositions of mine that carry inspiration from this series. But I´ll tell you about that later.

Have a great day.

Claudio.