The singing grannies from Udmurtia, Buranovo Babushki, will travel to Iisalmi in Eastern Finland in June. They will be the main attraction in the reopening of an Orthodox centre 6 June. The singing group were the runners-up at the 2012 Eurovision Sonc Contest in Baku.

Father Elias Huurinainen tells Finnish Eurovision news site viisukuppila.fi that the grannies will arrive to Iisalmi in the beginning of June to be the main attraction at the re-opening of KulttuuriArtos and HotelliArtos.

There has been a cultural centre in Iisalmi celebrating Karelian Orthodox belief for 24 years, and that has now been expanded and will be relaunched in June to better serve visitors to the area.

Father Elias further says he wanted an act to celebrate the relaunch that was in keeping with the centre’s philosophy and the Orthodox belief and the choice of the singing grannies was a natural one.

A letter was prepared in Udmurtian and the grannies agreed to travel to Finland. Father Elias also says that they both represent minority cultures and belong to the same religion as well as the Finno-Ugric language group, so the match is made in heaven.

Buranovski Babushki will perform apart from the Artos Centre in the Iisalmi cultural centre with 480 seats, or if enough of the €35 tickets are sold the performance can be moved to the sports centre with 1000 seats.

Iisalmi is a town of 22.000 inhabitants in the province of Eastern Finland. The Orthodox faith is one of the two officially recognised religions in Finland, and it is mainly connected with the Karelian culture of Eastern Finland.

Buranovo Babushki with special guests partying at a special New Year’s show on Russian TV: