Operating in conjuction with the Music Archive JAPA, Erik Lindström Fond has awarded a grant of 2,000 euros to vocalist Josefiina Vannesluoma. The grant is given each year to support a young Finnish musician's studies in the United States. Vannesluoma received the grant on 24 May at the May edition of the jaZZanti concert series.
Josefiina Vannesluoma was born in Turku in 1990. She began her studies in the pop/jazz voice at the department of Music Education at the Sibelius Academy in 2010, graduating with her Bachelor’s degree in 2013. She is currently in her second year at the Jazz Department of the academy, finishing her studies in May 2016. In 2014, she founded her first own group, Nossa Bossa, which performs her jazzy pieces, strongly influenced by Brazilian music. She is a member of a number of other groups, including Signe, formed by three vocalists and a double bassist; Waltz For Debby, a tribute to Monica Zetterlund and Bill Evans; and the voice-double bass duo Kajo that tackles jazz standards. Neither does she shirk popular music: in addition to making experimental pop using live electronics, she has been involved in a number of cross-over projects, such as the Finnish premiere of “Music For 18 People” – a minimalist piece by Steve Reich.
Operating in conjunction with the Finnish Pop Jazz and Pop Archive, Erik Lindström Fund aims at supporting Finnish jazz musicians in their studies primarily abroad. The initial capital was donated by Erik Lindström (1922-2015) and it is accumulated with donations.
The Finnish Jazz and Pop Archive collects, preserves and provides data and information related to Finnish popular music. The collected material span 540 shelf metres and the size of the digital archive is 21 terabytes.
The core of the archive is composed of material – such as recordings, tapes, videos, photographs, interviews, sheet music, manuscripts, music magazines and books, contracts and letters – donated by various music associations and private persons. JAPA stores also plenty of unreleased material, including 7200 hours of unique, unpublished music recordings. The archive is the home for a notable portion of Finnish music and cultural heritage.