Musician misses home but story ends on a positive note

Marja Gaynor loves the spontaneity of Irish musicians. In her native Finland musical gatherings are pre-planned, the violinist says. Not like a couple of weeks ago where she jammed with Glen Hansard and other musicians from a whole variety of musical backgrounds through the night.

“We had never played together but we just played till 3am and it was a great feeling. In Finland it probably wouldn’t happen in the first place. It’s much more formal – musicians stick to a plan.”

Gaynor began playing with Irish musicians when she first came to Ireland to study at the Cork School of Music as an Erasmus student in 2000. She had already visited Ireland with her youth orchestra as a teenager and was eager to learn about Irish traditional music and become "a proper trad fiddler".

“I thought trad would be this nice open thing where people jam with each other but it wasn’t like that. You have to find the right session to go to and there’s a strict etiquette. I have a massive respect for the traditional musicians who know thousands of tunes fluently.”

Gaynor grew up in Helsinki in a household filled with music. Her father was a professional cellist and her mother taught music to small children. Gaynor first discovered Irish traditional music sessions in an Irish pub in the small Finnish city of Lahti while studying at university and jumped at the chance to spend a year in Ireland as part of her music studies.

In Cork she discovered a city of “busking, gigs, art openings, sessions, post session parties. The general laid-backness and warmth of the Irish and of Cork with its good mix of cosy and vibrant put quite a spell on me.”

Return

Gaynor returned to Finland after a year to complete her studies but could not get Ireland out of her head, particularly because she had met a charming young Irish man. Straight after her graduation she bought a plane ticket to Cork.

“Already in 2001 I had met my now-husband who I was never quite able to forget. It was the peak of the Celtic Tiger so there were lots of casual gigs floating around – you could nearly make a living just from wedding gigs.”

On the recommendation of her violin teacher, Gaynor decided to do a masters degree in early music in the Netherlands. Once again she struggled to be away from Ireland.

“I missed Ireland and kept going back and forth for gigs. The early music scene in Ireland was starting to take off and I heard the Irish Baroque Orchestra was looking for more people. I moved back to Cork in 2005 and was lucky enough to get work with the Irish Baroque Orchestra and Camerta Kilkenny.” As Gaynor began putting down roots in her new home, she noticed many of her friends were moving abroad for work.

“If you want to live as a classical musician in Cork you really have to teach on the side and then go abroad for work. I love living here but I’m always delighted to get work in Dublin or do an international tour. I think out of all the students I met during my bachelor music year, nearly everybody who did music is either in London or Dublin.”

“It’s sad how many of Corkonian friends, brilliant musicians, have had to move to London or elsewhere just because there is no work here. I know many of them would happily come back given half the chance, especially when they’re at an age when they start having kids.”

Festival

Aside from teaching baroque violin and viola in the Cork School of Music and playing gigs and with orchestras, Gaynor has also worked as the artistic director of the East Cork Early Music Festival. “Cork has always been good to me but I wish there was more secure funding for the arts. You keep applying for different strands of funding from various bodies and waiting for decisions till the last minute without being able to book any musicians for definite and in the meantime trying to scrape together more money . . . it’s very hard.

“So many small arts organisations rely on the hard work of people doing all the administration unpaid and even after all this hard work the budgets are tiny. Turning up to a concert either as a musician or an audience member is so easy but what you see on the day is the tip of the iceberg. Somebody has worked their socks off to organise it.”

Gaynor married her Irish husband in 2008 and now has two daughters and a baby boy. She is very happy in Ireland but often finds herself imagining what life would be like as a musician in Finland.

“Finland is a great place to be – for one thing, a city of Cork’s size would have a full-time professional orchestra. I miss my family and the usual things like the four seasons, mould-free warm houses, walks in the quiet forests and proper rye bread.”

Longer, better-paid maternity leave is another perk of Finland that Gaynor must live without. “I can’t complain as I was given six months but if I was a freelance musician I would be in trouble. Creches are a lot cheaper in Finland too. It often works out cheaper to fly in my mum and sister to mind the kids when I’m on tour.”

Gaynor speaks Finnish to her children and hopes they will develop an interest in the language so that they have the option of living in Finland one day. “The girls know they’re half Irish, half Finnish and they love going to Finland for holidays. My eldest sang a Finnish song in her schools’ multicultural day last June, accompanied by my mum on the piano. I was a rather proud parent.”

She meets up with a group from Cork’s small Finnish community once a month for “music sessions of Finnish songs for the kids, strong coffee and gossip for the parents”.

“I’m very fond of Cork and Ireland but I’m still a Finn with a Finnish accent.”