Profile

left to right: Sweden, Denmark, Faroe Islands, Sami People, Finland, Åland Islands, Norway, Greenland, Iceland, Estonia

I'm Kalevi! :) I'm 20 years old and I'm a university student majoring in Music History and Literature and Applied Music, and I play the oboe and the bassoon. I'm also really interested in the Nordic countries (Finland in particular) and I'm hoping to be able to live and study in Helsinki at some time in my life.

iam the Kanji Tatsumi of Dreamwidth!

I'll just give you 10 random facts about me, because I'm honestly not sure what to put here.

1. I'm a Lutheran, and I'm a gay man. I don't let the way I was made interfere with how I want to develop my spirituality. (And you can find my name on the list of Reconciling Lutherans.)
   
2. I have absolute pitch (I can identify notes, chords, keys, etc. when I hear them without having a reference pitch). I don't like to make a big deal out of it because then people start going "what's this note? What's this chord?! What key is this in?!?!?!!eleventyone!!1!!?" and it's annoying when I know they're playing with me.
   
3. I'm an interesting mix of ethnicities. Half of my family is Chinese, another quarter is Norwegian, and one more quarter is a mix of other European ethnicities that I can't recall. I stick pretty strongly to both China and Norway, though.
   
4. I want to study in Finland someday. I've been teaching myself Finnish to get myself ready to go over there. I'm not really sure why I'm so interested, but Finnish music, history, language, and culture really fascinates me. I think if I spent any extended time there, I could easily be absorbed into it all.
   
5. I'm multilingual. I grew up speaking English and Mandarin at home, I studied Spanish in high school and Japanese in community college, I'm about to take a German class (and possibly French in the near future) for my degree, and I've been teaching myself Finnish (and Norwegian, Swedish, and Estonian on the side). Out of all these, I can comfortably speak English, Mandarin, and Spanish, and I'm okay at Finnish and Japanese.
   
6. My career goal is to be a professor of musicology and/or bassoon and/or oboe at a good university in the US or in the Nordic countries or Estonia.
   
7. I'm the principal contrabassoonist of our local symphony. I also play a lot of contrabassoon and bassoon gigs around Eastern Washington and North Idaho.
   
8. My car's name is Väinö. :)
   
9. I think I'm a bit better at the bassoon than at the oboe, but I still love playing both equally and I want to stay sharp (skill-wise!) on both instruments.
   
10. My top choice for my master's program is at the University of Minnesota, and my dream doctorate program is at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki.

If anything on my profile or in my journal strikes your fancy, please feel free to add me. I always love meeting new people! :)



"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." - John 3:16, NIV, emphasis mine

"Jumala on rakastanut maailmaa niin paljon, että antoi ainoan Poikansa, jottei yksikään, joka häneen uskoo, joutuisi kadotukseen, vaan saisi iankaikkisen elämän." - John 3:16, Finnish 1992 translation