Puut Ooppera (FI)

PUUTOOPPERA is an avant-garde art music album where the soloists are actual Finnish trees—birch, spruce, pine, alder, oak, and juniper. Composer-pianist-graphic artist-poet Pekka Toivonen teams up with legendary DJ and performance artist Tixa, along with the wildly eclectic Pekka Toivonen Ensemble, to bring this forest opera to life.

Trees were recorded burning in saunas and campfires in Helvetinjärvi National Park, layered with stream babble, crane calls, and mosquito hums. The result: a genre-blurring landscape that flows from jazz to ambient to punk and back. Think Coltrane in a conifer grove, Sibelius with a tin whistle, baritone sax meeting shadowy forest electronics.

Joining them on this trip: Mönninkäiset—sculptural beings made of mushroom ink, feathers, and myth. “They came into this world with no expectations,” says Tixa. They’ll appear live at the full PUUTOOPPERA premiere at Kulkurin Kappeli, Visuvesi, summer 2025.

Released by Alakulttuuritalo, the cult label behind Business City, this is not just music. It’s forest magic in album form.