I have a new recording and artvestors helped make it happen!

Current Amount received from Artvestors: $5550.00! Kiitos!

You’ve probably heard of musicians raising money from individuals to finance their projects—through websites such as Kickstarter. I am a founding member of an artist cooperative (New Bohemian Arts Cooperative) that has created its own collaborative financing model called Artvesting. We offer a personal, local alternative to the other large-scale crowd sourcing models and my new recording is our first Artvesting project.

The Cooperative dedicated 100% of artvesting support to help me realize the project.

I am so very grateful to all those who helped make this recording possible. Thank you!

If you want to order bittersweet you can send your orders to

Lupine Records P.O. Box 19274, Minneapolis, MN 55419 or visit cdbaby. Kiitos!

 

 

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In 2010 I had the great joy and wonder of teaching the 5-string kantele to thirty students that ranged in age from 5 years old to 81 in the town of Cokato, Minnesota. I came to them as a recipient of a grant written together with the New Bohemian Arts Cooperative and funded by the Minnesota State Arts Board from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. As a performer of ethnic music for many years I have had numerous opportunities to share the music of Finland and to teach the kantele, but never for an extended period of time. It had always been a dream of mine to find a teaching experience where I could join a Finnish-American community for more than a weekend and make some music together. [Read more…]

Diane Jarvenpa Narrates new Finnish film on immigration

Some We Kept; Some We Threw Back (2010), by Minna Rainio and Mark Roberts, depicts a man in contemporary times, making preparations for a sauna in the north woods of Minnesota.

As he chops wood, pumps water and lights the sauna fire – a woman narrates a series of experiences from her childhood when she and her parents left Finland for America.

Some We Kept; Some We Threw Back creates powerful parallels with the refugee’s stories of Angles of Incidence – the female voice describes the reasons her family left her home country: famine, unemployment, political persecution, and reveals the negative receptions they received as part of a new immigrant community.