 Along with starting The Talking Band, Zimet, Maddow and Shepard continued to perform with Chaikin as part of his new company The Winter Project.Its first production, "The Kalevala"based on the Kalevala, a 19th-century work of epic poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Finnish and Karelian oral folklore and Finnish mythologyfeatured music by Elizabeth Swados, and used minimal staging.The piece centred on the use of actor voices and the rhythms and melodies of the language.