Tuesday, October 03, 2023

Otto Donner



Otto, right bottom in the picture, was able to produce an album in 2014 (Otto was in his 80s) for Jim Pembroke. The band and Otto came to Kansas City where Jim lived. However, Otto was the moving force behind most of the good albums made in Finland all through the 1970s. I collected a brief biography.

Otto Donner and Love Records

I did not write the text below. It is simply compiled by AI as I asked it to define Donner and Love Records.

Otto Donner was a Finnish composer, arranger, and musician who was born on November 16, 1939, in Tampere, Finland. He was a member of the famous Finland Swedish Donner family . Donner’s musical styles varied from pop and rock music to jazz, electronic music, and contemporary classical music. He was one of the pioneers of Finnish avant-garde and experimental music as well as an important figure in Finnish left-wing “song movement” of the 1960s and 1970s . He studied at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki and later in Vienna as a student of György Ligeti 2. In 1966, Donner was one of the founders of record label Love Records which was a pioneering label in Finnish rock music .

Donner collaborated with many Finnish musicians and artists such as Erkki Kureniemi, Juhani Aaltonen, A. W. Yrjänä, Hasse Walli, and Dave Lindholm . He was also a film score composer for more than 50 movies and TV-series 2. Henrik Otto Donner passed away on June 26, 2013, at the age of 73 in Jakobstad, Finland 

SOURCES:

Learn more:

1. en.wikipedia.org 2. en.wikipedia.org

3. imdb.com  4. genius.com

Love Records was a Finnish record label founded in 1966 by Otto Donner, Atte Blom, Christian Schwindt, and Erik Lindström 1. The label was a pioneer in Finnish rock music and released music from many famous Finnish artists such as Juice Leskinen, Pekka Streng, Wigwam, and Tasavallan Presidentti 12. Love Records was also known for its political activism and support for left-wing causes 2. The label ceased operations in 1979 due to financial difficulties 1.

More from the standard source:

In the 1970s Love Records released most of the important Finnish rock bands and artists: Suomen Talvisota 1939–1940, Pekka Streng, Rauli Badding Somerjoki, Hector, Hurriganes, Dave Lindholm, Juice Leskinen, Kaseva, Maarit; more progressive rock bands such as Tabula Rasa, Finnforest and Piirpauke; "the godfather of Finnish underground", M.A. Numminen; and later on also such punk and new wave artists as Maukka Perusjätkä, and also Briard and Pelle Miljoona, which were Andy McCoy's bands before Hanoi Rocks .

Of the political bands signed to Love Records, some of the most notable are Agit-Prop and KOM-Teatteri [fi]. Also Kaisa Korhonen, Aulikki Oksanen and Kristiina Halkola [fi] were some female singers known for Love's political albums, where songs were often penned by such people as Kaj Chydenius and Eero Ojanen [fi]. Often these were cabaret-type songs in the tradition of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill or even Finnish translations of the songs by Brecht and Weill.

Love Records went bankrupt in 1979.

The Finnish movie Anna Mulle Lovee summarized the role it had in Finnish music:

Journalist Atte Blom (Jarkko Niemi in the movie) can't get the stories he wants to criticize the music industry through in Huvudstadsbladet. He takes his story directly to the printers and gets fired by the editor. Atte finds kindred spirits in frustrated musicians Henrik Otto Donner (Tomi Alatalo) and Christian Schwindt (Riku Nieminen). They found a new record company, Love Records, which challenges big music empires like Musiikki-Fazer .

Love Records publishes records that deviate from the mainstream and tries to expand Finnish musical culture. Musiikki-Fazer is doing his best to put a wedge in Love's cart by trying to block the distribution of Love's records. However, producer Toivo Kärki sees his own young self in the young actors and feels sympathy for them.

The central element is the idealism and good mood represented by the young Atte Blom in relation to the old, calculating way of producing and publishing music, as well as the belief in overcoming economic facts with artistic freedom and ambition. The problems in personal and family relationships and Blom's health condition, which in the film acts as his driving force, bring depth.

Love Records was there to produce the punk artists up to 1978. The Pohjalla colelction is a good sample of this era. Love went bankrupt and from Love records, Atte Blom (without Otto) continued to put out the punk and 1980s artists under Johanna.


In English, briefly

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