Ringa Manner is a music creator and performer from Helsinki. They are known for their work with Ruusut, a band that boldly reshapes Finnish pop music, the indie rock band Pintandwefall, and solo project The Hearing. In recent years, Manner has also worked as a composer for Q Theatre (Q-teatteri) and the Finnish National Theatre, among others. This year marks 20 years since Ringa and their school friends founded Pintandwefall. The band is still active today.
“I could not have imagined back then that the band would still exist 20 years later. It is a wonderful and, at the same time, completely unbelievable feeling. Much of my career and many of the people I have collaborated with, can be traced back to that moment when Pintandwefall became a band. That is when a network of creative projects and bands started to sprout; like a root system that just keeps covering more and more.”
The award-nominated album Adrian (Solina) from The Hearing solo project was released in 2016, and the striking self-titled debut album of Ruusut (Fullsteam Records) in 2018. The Hearing has released a trilogy of albums, while Pintandwefall’s seventh album, Seventh Baby (Soliti), came out in 2022. The fifth album of Ruusut, Mä valvon ja sä valvot mun kaa (PME Records), was released in spring 2026. During the pandemic, Manner became interested in the aesthetics of ambient music, and recently they have also been creating music for the theatre.
“One of the main ideas that guides me, is that anything can come your way, and you need to stay alert and be willing to jump into things with at a low threshold. You never know where something might lead, and you cannot know what you will encounter over the next five years.”
Keeping yourself open to new things and being willing to take risks is essential, but it also creates financial uncertainty and makes the future difficult to predict. Manner says that tolerating this uncertainty requires nerves of steel.
“A good year does not necessarily mean that the next year will be good, but a bad year does not indicate future bad years either. What you have achieved in the past does not necessarily correlate with the present. You have to constantly be ready to come up with something new that excites you and gives energy to pursue new possibilities; you never know what might start taking off. You have to find that excitement again and again.”
“Anything can come your way, and you need to stay alert and be willing to jump into things with at a low threshold.”
Manner has stirred their own thinking processes by reading a lot and attending theatre performances. Other people’s perspectives help them reflect on their own thoughts and engage in an internal dialogue. Ringa enjoys discovering connecting threads in other people’s creative work that then come together in their own music-making. Lately, Ringa has been inspired by thinking less and embracing a “just do it” mentality in their creative process.
“Over the past year, I have tried to just throw ideas out there, not to get stuck in an overthinking loop. If there was no band to bounce ideas off, or a commissioner, could I just make my own thing more freely?”
“Making music and being excited about music is at my core. And I have a need to get it out there for other people to hear.”
When you give a lot of yourself to projects, their ending inevitably brings everything to a stop. Ringa describes this as a kind of collapse or hibernation. After a project ends, one often questions one’s own identity as a music creator, it feels like the well has run dry and there is no next project already playing in their head.
“But year after year, I think that I might not stay alive if I did not create music. I need to have a visual, verbal or musical outlet or project underway that I am excited about. I don’t know if I could function without it. I would become smaller, retreat into myself and withdraw from social relationships. Making music and being excited about music is at my core. And I have a need to get it out there for other people to hear.”
In the spring 2026 round, Ringa was awarded a €16,000 grant from the Teosto Cultural Foundation for creative work. During the grant period, Manner aims to create their own small universe, in which a poetry book and an instrumental album function as independent works but also engage in a dialogue with one another. Ringa’s goal as a music creator is for the works to create a reality of their own, where to go and where to return from – somewhere to get lost in for a while – on the audience’s own terms.
“During 2025, I wrote a poetry book. Then I wanted to make an instrumental album that supports that world. In a way, it is very simple, but at the same time it is a big next step for me and my work. A step I have not dared to take or had not realised I could. It feels exciting and new, but also really natural. I have been creating instrumental works and soundscapes since 2020. It has been interesting to make this kind of calm, wordless, ambient-influenced music with longer arcs. It has felt like a very clear continuation of my work. To finish these works, I need a dedicated period of time during which I am not doing any other creative work.”
“In a way, it is very simple, but at the same time it is a big next step for me and my work.”
Ringa says the concept has been developing in their mind for around four years. But their income has depended on other projects and they have not had the opportunity to fully focus on it because they have not been able to dedicate time for it.
“A grant is a tool, an enabler, a very concrete way of making an opportunity possible. If I had not received this grant now, maybe this project would have happened six years from now, or maybe not at all. But now that I have been awarded it, I have the opportunity to focus on this project. And I also have the enthusiasm and the passion to move it forward.”
A warm thank you to Ringa for the interview!
You can follow Ringa on Instagram:
@ringasofi
@ruusut555
@pintandwefall