PROJECTS

Irina Björklund and Pauanne team up for the new project. The basis of cooperation was Yle's (The Finnish Broadcasting Company) new TV-series Peacemaker, in which Irina plays the lead role. Fifth member of the team is multi-intrumentalist and arranger Janne Lappalainen.

Their album Sing Girl was released in Autumn 2020 by Nordic Notes and band toured Finland in October 2020 until Finland was locked down again by Covid-19.

The lead character Irina Björklund plays is a peace negotiator called Ann-Mari - that's why the album is called "Barely Ann-Mari" - all the lyrics are written by Irina Björklund from the point of view of her. The only exception is our single, SING, GIRL, which is a traditional Finnish song (LAULA, TYTTÖ composed by Oskar Merikanto and original lyrics by J.H. Erkko) that I translated to English. The reason we use it as a single, is that the Finnish version of the song is the main theme of the series, which I also sing in the series - but as an a cappella version. The music video for SING, GIRL features material from the TV series.

This link from Variety has the basic info on the series (in English) + a great trailer, too: