Chamber Choir cc FREIA

Chamber Choir cc FREIA was founded in the Helsinki area in Finland in 2015 as an ensemble of highly experienced choral singers who had sung together in various formations for years, even decades. The founding members of cc FREIA had begun their choral careers at roughly the same time, in the chamber choir boom of the 1980s, and thus have a shared basic approach to choral music.

One of the major factors driving the founding of cc FREIA was to create an ensemble that was small enough to function like a vocal ensemble, without a separate conductor, but also large enough to produce a choral sound. The vision, if we wish to call it that, of cc FREIA is thus to be a “chamber choir that is like a vocal ensemble”, although it would be equally valid to define the vision as “good music in good company”.

The core ideas of the artistic profile of cc FREIA are interpretation of text, communication of emotional content in music and thematic concert programmes. We have also showcased Finnish and Nordic choral music in invited performances in London and Paris and at the Cork International Choral Festival.

So why call it FREIA? This name dropped into my head in spring 2015 as I was pitching the concept to potential members. Freia is the goddess of love and fertility in Scandinavian mythology and also a great lover of music; but the name of the choir is in all capitals because it can also be parsed as an acronym for the Latin phrase:
flamina resurgentes exspirant iterum antiqua = “old winds blow again”.
Or, somewhat more prosaically:
flatus resurgentes equitant iterum antiqui = “old farts ride again”.


Jaakko Mäntyjärvi
translator, composer, choir conductor
founder and artistic director of cc FREIA