Delta Life's Music Was Built from Zero Through Collaboration

Marzi Nyman has various approaches to composing. In his own guitar music, ideas come to life together with the musicians. Orchestral and chamber music is created privately using notation software. And then there are collaborative projects, like Delta Life, where demos and ideas bounce back and forth between the creators.

"When I write orchestral music, it's an intimate process of reaching into my own core. Writing in isolation is rewarding, but sometimes you need an outlet, and that outlet is another person. Working with others means making compromises, but that's also when you discover things you never would have thought of on your own," Nyman explains.

Encounters in the Creative Process

Marzi Nyman has composed the music for Delta Life, a multidisciplinary work to be performed on the water during the last weekend of August. Words are used sparingly, but they carry all the more weight. The lyrical wizard of the music is Petri Sirviö, leader of the Screaming Men’s Choir.

“Petri has a fascinating relationship with texts and with everything this work is about. We didn't know each other before, but even our first remote meeting was great fun, and there was an immediate connection,” Nyman says.

At the beginning of the collaboration, Petri Sirviö felt that the artists had a deep mutual respect for one another.

“Marzi has an effortless virtuosity that comes not only from his instrument, the guitar, but from somewhere within him; his music seems to originate deep inside.”

Sirviö compares his work to musicians jamming together.

“For me, instruments are pieces of language, words, rhythm, and intonation, different qualities and flavours of sounds, the way they resonate.”

Created from Scratch

The creation of the music for Delta Life began from a very open-ended starting point.

“I can’t think of another work quite like this. The possibilities were endless. We’ve used a lot of storyboards and Miro boards to make sure everyone shares the same audiovisual vision which may not necessarily match reality,” Nyman laughs.

In Huutajat’s large-scale stage productions, such as Carmen, there are typically clear dramaturgical elements that Sirviö condenses from five pages down to five lines.

“With Delta Life, however, the whole world is involved. The story prompts we received from Jukka (Takalo) were abstract and multifaceted,” Sirviö explains.

Artistic director Jukka Takalo provided an initial framework that was timeless, spiritual, and even sacred in nature. The idea for the work simmered in Nyman’s mind for nearly a year before taking shape. Through dialogue beginning in October 2025 between Nyman and Sirviö, choreographer Mikko Makkonen, Takalo, and other members of the creative team, the music was completed in May 2026.

“This has been a fun process of iteration. It’s been exciting to figure out how Huutajat’s way of breaking traditional rhythms can work together with music that otherwise suits the spectacle. We’ve found a good balance in the dialogue,” Sirviö says.

“It’s been great to see videos from the dance rehearsals and recordings by Huutajat. That’s when it all starts to come together,” Nyman says, referring to the concrete merging of music with the other art forms involved in the production.

Behind the Words: Incantations, Potency and Power

In the story of Delta Life, the air-guitar forces led by Marzi Nyman face off in battle against Huutajat. Sirviö found himself considering what words should be hurled at the guitarist army in opposition to the riffs of popular music.

“Finding the raw material felt meaningful. It comes from the headwaters of the Oulujoki River and represents ancient wisdom. At the same time, this is a contest in which the opponent should be provoked, mocked, and even suitably intimidated.”

In the end, the verbal elements that fit the spectacle were found largely in Karelian incantations from Viena Karelia, associated with different life situations and ailments. Their source was the widow Anni Lehtonen who was interviewed more than a century ago by Samuli Paulaharju.

“Those words had potency and power. In the performance itself, however, very little of them remains directly. What remains is more the framework and spirit behind them.”

The work is only truly complete when it is performed.

“Form is important. In a traditional orchestral concert setting, the encounter is very music-centered. Here, everything has to be expressed on a larger scale and fit into the overall spectacle.”

For Nyman, artistic communication through live performance or improvisation is something magical.

“If you find another person who has a similar relationship with music, it becomes very personal. When you come off stage, you feel as though you've had a great conversation and now know that person really well,” Nyman says.

Even this intimate exchange requires an audience.

“The audience has to be part of it; it raises the stakes!”

On Choosing the Music Creators

“Marzi Nyman seemed like the kind of artist who could unite the lyrical musical language of the spirits of nature and the national-romantic landscape with the popular, global exuberance of air guitar performance. Huutajat, meanwhile, is the most internationally recognised cultural phenomenon to emerge from Oulu, alongside the Air Guitar World Championships. And who else would defend The Chalice of Poetry with the sword of words against invisible guitars, if not Huutajat?” says artistic director Jukka Takalo.

Photographs: Mikko Törmänen and Aki-Pekka Sinikoski