On 23 January 2026, Arctic Pulse and City of Oulu, in collaboration with Kiruna Snow Festival, presented Davvi Oktavuohta – Northern Connection at Kiruna City Hall (Kristallen) in Kiruna. The concert brought together Finnish Sámi yoiker, singer and actor Ingá-Máret Gaup-Juuso and Oulu All Star Big Band, with Jukka Eskola as trumpet soloist and Jaakko Jauhiainen as conductor.
The programme featured music by Gaup-Juuso and traditional Sámi yoiks arranged for big band by Mikko Hassinen. By bringing joik and big band together on the same stage, the concert highlighted new possibilities for presenting Sámi-led repertoire in a large-ensemble format and introduced audiences in Kiruna to a distinctive cross-border production from the North.
For Arctic Pulse, the concert was a concrete example of cross-border cooperation in practice. It connected artists, organisers and audiences through a shared cultural experience rooted in the Arctic region, while showing how Indigenous musical heritage can be presented in new artistic formats.