(bow whooshes) (soft violin music) - When I was six years old, I started playing piano, and my mom said that I was unable to sit still.

So my mom saw an advertisement for this violin teacher, and she was from Finland.

She immigrated to the United States.

So in addition to learning classical music, I also learned Finnish folk music and got to hear the language from a very young age, as well as playing the folk tunes on violin.

(soft instrumental music) (soft violin music) My father grew up here in the United States, on the Iron Range, speaking Finnish as his first language before he went to kindergarten.

So I did always know about my heritage, (children singing) and when I would go to perform in Finland as a child, we would see relatives and connect with them, both from my mom's side of the family and my dad's side.

(children singing) I had a Finnish-American duo called Kaivama that was active for many years, and we toured a lot and performed.

And then, after that, I formed a duo with a Finnish accordionist named Teija Niku, and we've played in Europe quite a bit and also played here.

(soft violin music) My work in the last few years has really gone toward my own compositions and more experimental work and audiovisual work.

(pitcher pump rattles) I have a project called Mine Songs that is an umbrella project for a lot of different media that's based on the Mesabi Iron Range, where I come from.

(water babbles) It's very inspired by the landscape there.

However, it is also very connected to immigration, American cultural narratives, and my own family history, thinking about how I have arrived on this planet, in this place, at this time, (soft violin music) having most of my family been in Europe for millennia and now only being here in this country for a hundred years, and trying to create that connection with landscape again through my art.

(indistinct) As a person with so much Finnish blood, it's really second nature to me to be very connected to the earth, and I think, at the moment we're in, where we're living so outside of the earth, how do we create a sense of home in our landscapes, in our environments?

I think it's a really pertinent question nowadays when we're dealing with a lot of environmental pollution and unsafe places to habitate on the earth.

(water babbles) (bird chirping) (throat clears) A few years ago, I had a late-stage cancer diagnosis that was extremely difficult.

I was thrust into a bit of a different universe.

It was survival.

It was as strong a response as I could muster, which I will say, I think was a very, very strong response, because there's an immediate threat to my life.

So I have to have the treatment.

I have to quell the cancer, get it under control.

(soft violin music) When life returns a bit back to normal, even though it's a new normal, it has been a bit challenging to continue living in the moment.

And that, I think, is where the biggest work comes in.

You learn to grapple with how your life has changed, and you use your brain as well as your instinct to guide your experience and what skills you need to strengthen in order to have the best possible quality of life on a daily basis.

It isn't easy, but it is very transformative.

And I don't know that kind of transformation would've happened for me without that diagnosis.

I can't say, but I would guess no.

(soft violin music) Having some gigs planned for when I was in chemo, actually being able to go through with that and play and share things in such a moment really helped me through that difficult, dark winter.

(soft violin music) When you're playing an instrument and truly listening, there isn't space in your brain for anything else.

So it's a safe space for me to play my instrument when I'm feeling troubled or need to calm my central nervous system.

And it's also a gift to share with others.

I've formed community through music.

(violin music) (guitar music) I've gathered a few artifacts from my life in music and the arts.

Here is something from when I played Sounds of the North Festival in Poland with Finnish accordionist Teija Niku, and we played in a beautiful church there from the 13th century.

And this is an album that we made that's on a German label.

It's called (speaking in foreign language), Song of America.

(song playing in foreign language) I also use a lot of drone imagery in my work, and this is some still imagery of mining practices on the Mesabi Iron Range.

(song playing in foreign language) And I had my first solo exhibition of audiovisual work a few years ago at Joseph Nease Gallery.

It was called Listening Through Context, and it was a part of FinnFest 2023.

(song playing in foreign language) And that was special for me to exhibit a bunch of audiovisual work for the first time in a gallery space.

(bright violin music) I traveled to Finland in 1992 to play at Kaustinen Folk Music Festival.

I was 12 years old, but then last year I also played at Kaustinen Folk Music Festival, and I was 44 years old.

(Sara chuckles) When I was in chemo, I was really thrilled that I could still go and present some work at the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which is right around the corner from where I went to grad school at New England Conservatory.

And that was last year, and that was a full-circle moment.

It was a Nordic program.

(soft instrumental music) This instrument is called the Hardanger d'amore.

It's a combination of the Hardanger fiddle, the Norwegian national instrument, and the Baroque instrument, the viola d'amore.

And both of those instruments have resonant strings that run underneath the fingerboard, so they're never touched by the fingers.

They just sympathetically resonate with the played strings.

And I'm going to play a piece of mine called "A Mass."

(soft violin music) When I was younger, I played the music that was available to me or that I was expected to play.

(soft violin music) When I went to college and played classical music, and as time has gone on, I've learned to find my own leanings and artistic voice, borrowing from all of this.

So it really has been a process of self-actualization, becoming myself and stepping into my own power through grappling with artistic output.

(singing in foreign language) My draw to Finnish folk music and to keeping it in my life, especially the singing tradition, is that it has been a part of my family through many generations.

It's keeping these connections through time.

I know that my great-grandmother, who raised my father, would sit in a rocking chair and sing these songs.

So there's somehow like a matriarchal lineage that I draw a lot of power and strength and peace from.

(singing in foreign language) I am very into ancestor worship, for the lack of a better term, which just means honoring our ancestors and believing that they live within us and can be a place of solace and comfort (singing in foreign language) that manifests through physical items I have from my grandparents and great-grandparents.

I have my great-grandfather's clock, my great-grandfather who came from Slovenia.

I have his vest.

I have an old bottle from my other great-grandfather, and I have my great-grandmother from Slovenia, her rosary and prayer book.

Those are some of my most precious possessions.

(singing in foreign language) I'm a person who thinks a lot about legacy.

I think in long arcs, not only what's in the future, but what has come before, and especially because of the cancer diagnosis, leaving a legacy of artwork that only I can create is of utmost importance.

It is intrinsically linked to a spiritual path for me.

Learning to live with the cancer, making peace with death, living in the moment, and letting fear fall away, and really getting to the deep place of my own truth and putting it out in the world to leave for people.

And what happens with it after that isn't up to me.

It's my job in my lifetime now to make my work.

(violin music)