This week sees Oulu gorging itself on a full table of summer events. Go get 'em.
Jazz, sass, and men in uniform at MilJazz 09.
Terwa Rock, one of the summer's first rock festivals, will hit Kuusisaari’s pavillion from Friday 18.30 to Saturday 16.00. Bands include ska cats Blaster Master, alternative heavy band Sigil, indy rocksters Supernormals, and Tunguska Press, whose ‘music is a soup...we do not hesitate to spice it up…we take the blues and chop it like onions and then we cry cause we have to eat it alone.’ Tickets 7€ Fri, 9€ Sat, or 14€ for a two-day pass.
At Miljazz, a free‘picnic-style’ concert at Vocational College Luovi (Veteraanikatu 2, 18.00), three Finnish Army bands play the Oulu date of their national tour. The Lahti performance included Grammy-winning trumpeter Randy Brecker, but even without him, ‘entertaining soldier jazz’ is promised.
A ‘Midsummer Night’s Music Moment’ will go down at Thursday 20.00 in Ylikiiminki church, withAila Knihtilä singing to Maija Tynkkynen’s organ accompaniment.
Lars Westerland will lecture on ‘Germany’s prison camps in Finland’ at the Pakkala hall of the city library at Friday 18.00.
Vectorama, the biggest LAN gaming event in the North, is taking over Teatria at Härkätie 1 from Thursday 16.00 to Sunday 16.00. For 10€ you get a booth, desk, ethernet port, electricity, and can compete in games from Counter-Strike to Project Gotham Racing and Warcraft 3. Bring your own PC.
'The Book Fair Of Nightless Nights' has novelists and poets on three stages at Ouluhalli, Ylioppilantie 4 all day Saturday and Sunday performing and reading. At least we think so. Everyone from Eero Pokela to Jukka Tervo is on the programme. But, though the organisers bill this ‘for writers, publishers, bookshop owners, reporters, teachers, book collectors, and consumers – everyone to whom books are an essential part of life,' they don't state what's happening, exactly. We live on trust, and assuming it's not a foambath party, which would be cool, tickets run 8€/4€ a day, or 10€ for both days.
Definitely not having a foambath party at Hotel Eden on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday are Oulu's taxi drivers riding motorcycles for ‘Hot Pursuit,’ a 200-strong cycling event.
Feel frisky and fancy? Traditional Finnish ‘stage’ dancing to the sounds of TV-familiar Finnpop songstress Janita Hirvonen is on offer at Hietasaari’s ‘Dance Lighthouse,’ Hietasaarentie 13, on Thursday evening (no exact time provided).
Or you can watch actors do it in ‘Two Dances,’ a play about post-Swedish Oulu receiving Russian soldiers. Produced by the Four-Leaf-Clover Theatre Company, it shows at Cultural Centre Valve, Hallituskatu 7, 16.00 Sunday. Tickets 10€ in advance from Valve.
The Youth Underground Theatre at the Oulu School of art at Kansankatu 54 is having a ‘Theatre Tent Week,’ with shows from Thursday to Saturday at 18.00, 19.00 and 20.00, admission free.
‘The District of Steel’ - a strongman competition - challenges 'anyone regardless of age or fitness’ to appear on Saturday from 11.00 to 17.00 at the marketplace then lift as many weights as possible on an outdoor ‘CSteel’ gym machine. The lifts are tallied, and the county with the most lifts (Pori? Turku? Helsinki? Rovaniemi? Oulu?) wins glory and two promotional machines.
If that isn’t enough exertion, the 25th ‘Tar Row,’ a marathon boat race down Oulu river, starts on Friday.
The low-down on this week's art exhibitions:
Jaakko Henrik Moilanen’s paintings are on show at the Real Deal Cellar Gallery at Isokatu 1. A Retrospective Design exhibition of glass and ceramics by Heikki Orvala is on at the information space at the Northern Ostrobothnia museum in Ainolan Puisto from 10.00 to 17.00 every day except Monday. ‘In the art collection of Hailuoto library’ is on at Luovontie 231, if by chance you’re visiting Hailuoto any time soon. For photos by Janne Laine, go to Galleria Harmaja at Kirkkokatu 11b. And ‘The light of nights, the darkness of days,’ an exhibition of light fixtures and art, combines ‘historical myth, principle, sayings, and natural observation,’ at the Oulu Museum of Art, Kasarmintie 7.
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