Sunday morning music

 

Many readers will know of Nightwish, the Finnish symphonic metal group.  It's on hiatus at present, to allow several of its members to focus on solo albums and opportunities.  However, its keyboardist Tuomas Holopainen and multi-instrumentalist Troy Donockley, along with Holopainen's wife Johanna Kurkela, formed a progressive folk band in 2017.  They named it Auri.  The group isn't nearly as well-known in the USA as Nightwish, but it's gained a dedicated following in Europe.

In an interview with Blabbermouth, members described Auri's genesis as follows.

On the origins of AURI:

Tuomas: "2011 was when the seed was planted, so to say. That's when Troy made the first song called 'Aphrodite Rising'. And, that's a whole different story, but already back then, we knew that at some point that the three of us, we needed to be doing music together because the way we think about music and life, everything, it's so connected. It's such a rare thing that we need to come together and see what kind of music we would be able to create between the three of us. But for many years, we had other duties to attend to, with Johanna's solo career, us with NIGHTWISH being really busy with the 'Endless Forms Most Beautiful' album and tour, that we didn't have a chance to realize this dream called AURI until 2017. At some point in 2016, we realized, 'What are you doing next year? Do you have anything in your calendar?' 'Not really, nothing.' 'So, how about we try to do something?' It went a bit topsy-turvy because the first thing we did last March was to take the promotional shots, the photos of the band and of the landscapes for the album booklet. That kind of inspired and even forced us to continue recording the actual album."

On the songwriting process for AURI's debut album:

Troy: "It was quite unusual and extraordinary way to make an album, really. From the first seeds of the project — it's not a project, it's an entity — from the very beginning, because of the commitments we had to Johanna's solo work and me and Tuomas with NIGHTWISH, we just put everything in the freezer. We froze even the idea of it. But, it was still always there and it was still whispering to us and telling us, 'This has to happen.' In all that time, we did nothing towards AURI. Nothing. We just talked about it whenever we met up. We knew it was going to be some kind of experiment. We didn't know how it was going to solidify itself and become real. Once we did that, that strange, we did all the photographs for the album first before there was any album, it really got momentum and became really quite fast, the writing of the music. So we did it all in six months. We've got 11 songs on the record, but we did 10 of them in six months. It was the fastest we've ever worked, but we were just driven and inspired so deeply that the thing just wrote itself."

There's more at the link.

I've chosen one track from each of Auri's three albums (so far) to introduce you to their music.  From their eponymous first album, here's "I Hope Your World Is Kind".

From their second album, "Those We Don't Speak Of", here's "Light And Flood".

And, from their third album, "Candles & Beginnings", here's "The Invisible Gossamer Bridge".

You'll find more of their music on their official YouTube channel.

Peter