First up, to warm us up a little bit, the Italian duo Emian graced the stage. With on the one side a harp, and on the other side a plethora of different instruments like flutes, bagpipes, mouth harp, … they brought both traditional tunes and originals inspired by their own local folklore. The music was absolutely wonderful, ranging from dreamy and mesmerizing, all the way to powerful and uplifting. Pretty soon you could see already quite a few people moving to the sweet music that swept over us, really getting us in the mood for the main act. In between every song there was an expression of gratefulness combined with some background about the band or next song, which now and then took a bit too long, somewhat taking the flow out of the concert. I think a lot of us would have loved to hear one extra song on the already short set list. While it was their very first time in Finland, here’s for hoping that they get to come back again, so we can enjoy some more of their stunning music!

And then it was time for Faun, a band that I’ve been looking forward to catching live for quite some years now, but somehow always missed. The 4 guys and 2 ladies came on stage and kicked off with the classic ‘Andro‘, immediately getting people moving to the sweet folk tunes that we were all there for to enjoy. Since they were touring to promote their latest release ‘Pagan‘, we of course got live renditions of tracks from that album like ‘Baldur‘, ‘Tamlin‘ and ‘Galdra‘, but also got some fan favorites served like ‘Diese kalte Nacht‘, ‘Alba‘, ‘Walpurgisnacht‘, ‘Odin‘ and ‘Hymn To Pan‘. The passionate play of all the band members and the clearly happy space they were in, worked really infectious, and soon we found ourselves smiling while being swept away by their music rooted both in the past and the present. Add to that the great atmosphere created by the stage decoration, and regular out poor of smoke, and the venue turned into a completely different world for the time that the set lasted. If you’ve never seen this band live, and you’re any bit into this kind of folk music that has strong links with our ancestors, you need to catch them whenever you can. They’re pure magic!