Play Folk Big Band’s music video with new stamps

Itella Posti Oy has published a stamp featuring traditional Finnish musical instruments. A code hidden in the image has a link to a brand new music video of Sibelius Academy's Folk Big Band with a smartphone or tablet. 

Traditional instruments with a modern touch

The 2014 EUROPA stamps represent national musical instruments. Sanna Mander, a new name among stamp designers, has illustrated two thoroughly Finnish instruments: the accordion and kantele. Mander's approach to the traditional theme in the stamps is modern and personal

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Mander considers traditional folk music a continuum that links the past with the future. She says that in the stamps she depicted musicians in the moment in which music and the surrounding nature merge into one. "One is playing in a field covered with notes, another is in a forest with notes rising to form the tops of birches."

An identifier that can be scanned with the CEE App application is hidden in the images of the National instruments stamps. Users who have downloaded the app only need to align their smartphone or tablet with the stamp and directly access the web to watch a video on YouTube with Folk Big Band, Finnish folk musicians from the University of the Arts Helsinki Sibelius Academy, performing. The video was made as part of the extensive and long cooperation between Itella and Sibelius Academy.

The stamps' CEE App application works on all Android and iPhone phones and tablets. Customers can download the application free of charge from App Store or Google Play. The application will also be released for Windows devices during May.

In the impressive video by Magneetto Media Oy, Folk Big Band performs Konsta Jylhä's schottice in D minor, arranged for the kantele and accordion in line with the theme of the stamps.

"Various types of accordions and stringed instruments similar to the kantele are common in many countries, but Finnish folk music is quite unique in the world with its Slavic influences," says Petri Prauda, lecturer in folk music at Sibelius Academy and artistic director of Folk Big Band, consisting of up to 40 musicians.

Text: © Itella Posti Oy(Link to another website.) (Opens New Window)