Programme note for "Helikon Wasp" for conducting trombonist and orchestra

"The first time that this title came in to my head was on an airplane from Switzerland. I had been playing a concert were I felt rather disappointed with the intellectual emptyness that sometimes creeps in to the world of classical music, and I was just in the process of putting a programme together with the pianist Peter Jablonski. I was rather drunk, I had been drinking wine and whisky in the business class lounge, and in to my head came music that would not have appeared have I been sober...the music reminded me of the more adventurous performances at the Woodstock Festival(including that of Jimmy Hendrix), and I immediately wrote down the title and some scetches that I heard in my head. The concert with Peter Jablonski never materialized, and I never even started on the piece for trombone and piano, but the title remained, and when I got the opportunity to write for the fantastic Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra I decided that THIS was to become my "Helikon Wasp". The motives that were created in drunkenness changed character while I was working on them in a sober state of mind, but the essence and original idea remained intact: "Helikon Wasp" is a sort of hero, that does not have any moral or religous convictions other than just doing whatever his mind and soul tells him to do, and the thing he hates more than anything else is intellectual mannerism. The name "Helikon", however, comes from the greek mythology, and at the same time as the wasp hates intellectualism, he does want to please a classical audiences that usually needs something intellectual to justify a "work of art". Therefore he gives the following description of his name: "Helikon was the mountain where Zeus lived, and close to this mountain was also the "valley of the muses" close to Thespiai. Above that valley was the well called Hippokrene, and if one drinks from the water there it is said that poetic inspiration comes to you. Helikon is also, infact, the name of two different kinds of instruments: One is a string instrument from ancient Greece, an instrument that was used for references in music theory. Another one is a brass instrument with a circular form, a sort of tuba or sousaphone that is used often in march music." More than that need not to be said about the piece "Helikon Wasp" for conducting trombonist and orchestra. I hope you will have a good time listening to it!"

- Christian Lindberg