Finland-based American composer and cellist Wilson Tanner Smith was at Narva Art Residency in 2023. At the heart of the residency was the improvised music project Still Point, which comprised three concerts held at the Kreenholm Manufactory.
We encourage Finnish artists and artists living in Finland to apply for the Finnish Cultural Foundation grant for 2027. The application round is open until 31st of August 2026. Find more information here: nart.ee/en/grants-for-artists-residencies/
For a few days at the end of July 2023, I curated a series of concerts and recordings in a few spaces in the historic, now-defunct Kreenholm Textile Factory in Narva, Estonia, a stone’s throw from the Russian border. In Kreenholm’s reverberant rooms, these sessions reflected on the layers of history, labor, conflict, and lives past and present that have shaped the factory and the constantly re-evolving border city.
A large and unexpected part of this project involved the restoration of an antique harmonium found in a nearby town, which had passed from church to schoolroom to living room to basement—and then to factory. Working on-site between visits from jumpy border guards, I disassembled it, cleaned out what was left by the mouse who used to call it home, and roughly made it playable again. It creaks, squeaks, buzzes, breathes, and sounds just as it does. Improvisations lean into the characteristics of its reeds and levers, its material and history—human and non-human—as well as those of my cello as it sounds in these spaces. Sensing and listening to the instrument mirrored sensing and listening to factory, river, city, border…
Most of the titles on this album come from scraps of signage and other detritus found around the factory, coarsely translated to English, and from the Finnish folk melody that anchors the closing track. This was pulled from Shostakovich’s obscure Suite on Finnish Themes commissioned by the Soviet Military in 1939, purportedly to be played in Helsinki after the USSR’s successful conquest of Finland. This, of course, never happened, but it echoes the spirits of silence and tension in Narva, and the role of culture in conflict and communion while these familiar narratives are repeated again during Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
Concerts performers:
Wilson Tanner Smith (cello, harmonium, found objects, performance installation, creation/curation)
Katariin Raska (torupill / Estonian folk bagpipes)
Kristjan Kannukene (viola, electric guitar, voice, performance installation)
Heliä Mailiis Viirakivi (flute, voice, performance installation)
As a result of the project, Wilson Tanner Smith’s solo CD Perpetual Guest was released. https://sawyereditions.bandcamp.com/album/perpetual-guest
Find out more about the artist here: https://www.nart.ee/en/artists/wilson-tanner-smith/