World’s oldest performing tenor is till going strong

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By Juha Mäkinen
     
      Vilho Kekkonen is the oldest performing tenor in the world.
      The claim is not really surprising, when you learn that Vilho was born in February 1909 and is celebrating his 100th birthday in a day or two.
      When Kekkonen was born, the midwife said that as he came into the world on Sunday, right after the church service, he was very likely to become a cantor.
     
She was right. Kekkonen eventually did become a cantor, but it took some time.
      As a young man he did odd jobs from timber floating to working on the roads with an asphalt gang.
      During the Interim Peace (1941) between Finland's wars with the Soviet Union he received his cantor-organist degree at the age of 32, and in 1950 he took a diploma in singing at the Sibelius Academy.
      In the 1940s, Kekkonen played supporting characters in films and sang in the choir of the Finnish Opera.
      In the period from 1950 to 1974, Kekkonen worked as the cantor-organist of Taulumäki Church in the rural municipality of Jyväskylä. For many years, he served as a choirmaster and singing teacher.
     
Kekkonen is more known for his singing than for his playing skills - and most of all for being still in possession of his talents at such an advanced age.
      Kekkonen has carried the title of the world’s oldest performing tenor for a long time - it was mentioned already in the 1996 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records.
      In recent years, performances have occurred at fairly infrequent intervals, but just often enough to prevent younger men from threatening his world record.
      ”On average, I have sung at Christmas and at Midsummer. When my name appears in the newspaper, then I have to go”, Kekkonen remarks.
     
The third Jyväskylä Voice Competition for Tenors in honour of Vilho Kekkonen, the oldest performing tenor in the world, is being arranged from February 22nd through 25th.
      The patron of the competition, naturally Vilho Kekkonen himself, opened the event with a concert on his 100th birthday on Saturday February 21st.
     
Are you still nervous about performing - at the age of 100?
      ”A performance is not good, if there is no stage fright. One just has to select the right time for it - either just before or right after the performance, but preferably not during it! Getting the timing right is difficult, but one can learn it”, grins Kekkonen.
      Kekkonen stresses the importance of opening the voice. During his student years, he basically broke his voice when his teacher demanded him to sing high and loud.
      ”Many singers make the mistake of starting to sing right away, but nobody’s voice can take that. Even athletes with strong muscles always stretch before performances - why should a singer with very delicate muscles not do the same”, Kekkonen argues.
     
Kekkonen and his wife live in an apartment building in the centre of Jyväskylä.
      When asked about their daily routines, Kekkonen digs up a calendar in which his daily doings have been pencilled accurately.
      ”For example last Friday: Wake-up at nine, a shower, porridge, tablets, plums, Levolac, coffee - and this girl, Mrs Kekkonen here, will remind me pretty quick if I forget something”, Kekkonen reports.
      Kekkonen uses plenty of local humour and euphemisms in his speech. He calls his wife a girl, and his students are patients, while the Winter War was ”that border skirmish of 1939”.
     
The border skirmish was of course a full-blown and rather bloody 105-day war between Finland and the Soviet Union, during which an incident happened that was to remain one of the strongest memories in Kekkonen’s life.
      He had been ordered as a messenger between the front line and company headquarters, while Russian paratroopers who had been dropped in the area were lurking in ambush in the tree-tops.
      His fellow-soldier was shot in his sleigh, and Kekkonen feared that he himself would encounter the same fate.
      So he decided to put his faith in his best weapon - singing.
      ”I was riding on a horse-drawn sleigh in the moonlight and singing Lenski’s Aria from Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin, and I survived. It is the highest fee I have ever been paid for one song”, Kekkonen recalls.
      Happy Birthday, Vilho!
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 19.2.2009


Links:
  Jyväskylä Voice Competition for Tenors

Helsingin Sanomat