Musiikin Aika

New Executive Director of the Time of Music Festival is Mr. Mikko Leppänen

paakayttaja — Fri, 20 Dec 2019 08:09:20 +0000

The contemporary music festival Time of Music organized yearly in Viitasaari, Finland will receive a new Executive director from the beginning of the year 2020, Mikko Leppänen. Time of Music is one of the oldest festivals of contemporary music in Finland and has multiple international partners.

Mikko Leppänen currently works as the General Manager of Vivo Symphony Orchestra, a national youth orchestra, and from the beginning of 2020 will divide his time between these two organizations. Leppänen holds a Master of Music (Arts Management) degree from the University of the Arts Helsinki Sibelius Academy, and a B. Sc. from the Helsinki School of Economics. Having a strong background from many art music associations, he has previously worked as a producer at the Helsinki Organ Summer Festival and as the General Manager of Sysmä Summer Sounds Festival. Before changing over to the cultural field, Leppänen worked with international marketing and communication. “Time of Music is a very unique festival in the Finnish music scene, and I am very excited to start working for the organization” he states.

Former director Mikko Vehkaperä will return to his duties at the University of Lapland in Rovaniemi. Composer Johan Tallgren continues as the Artistic director of the festival.

The next edition of Time of Music Festival will be organized in Viitasaari, Finland 30 June – 5 July, 2020. The Summer Academy courses organized alongside with the festival will be published and the admissions opened in late January.

More information from the artistic director Johan Tallgren, johan.tallgren@musiikinaika.org, +358 40 724 6345.

Programme out: Time of Music dwells on light, virtual reality and the power of cooperation

paakayttaja — Thu, 23 May 2019 12:22:07 +0000

This year we immerse ourselves into the mystical and sacred by examining the existential dimensions of light in multi-modal musical works. In the core for this we find the music by Kaija Saariaho and Karlheinz Stockhausen – the festival will present works and productions by both and heard now for the first time in Finland. Being the composer in residence, Saariaho’s pieces are abundant in the festival programme. A well-anticipated world premiere by Alexander Schubert “Unity Switch” explores the possibilities of virtual reality and contemplates on interconnections of sound, light and movement while integrating the audience in the process of creation.

Festival theme explored in works by Saariaho and Stockhausen – Saariaho’s first stage work Study for life performed first time since 1981

The theme of the 2019 edition of the festival is The Grammar of Light. Light, in turn, has been a central theme in both our guest composers’, Kaija Saariaho’s and Karheinz Stockhausen’s repertoire. “Both composer have their own idiosyncratic relationship with light, linked with multiple layers of spirituality, sensuality and enlightenment. Both are also well known for their cooperation with close and trusty musician friends, like flutist Camilla Hoitenga who is also performing and teaching at the festival. It is also important to remember that the latest visit by the contemporary music superstar Stockhausen to Finland in Helsinki Biennale 1989 was curated by Kaija” – depicts the artistic director of the festival Johan Tallgren the themes and counterparts of the festival.

Light has a central role in many festival concerts. It is not only for creating atmosphere but exists as a equal partner with artists, sound and motion. In the opening concert on Tuesday 2nd July called “Signals and Sequences” video artist Klaas Verpoest conjures a three-dimensional cosmic space on the concert hall walls while trombonist Thomas R. Moore parcours and plays amongst the audience Signale zur Invasion simultaneously with the eight-channel work Oktohonie, both being parts of Stockhausen’s Licht cycle and its Dienstag (Tuesday), that is often described as “The day of War” in the septology. In the main concert of the festival on Saturday 6th July “The Heart of Darkness”, Saariaho’s first ever musical theatre piece Study for life for soprano, actor, electronics and lights is performed for the first time since its premiere in 1981 by Tuuli Lindeberg and a French collective La Chambre aux échos. The work is based on the famous poem by T. S. Eliot “The Hollow Men”. The staged version of Saariaho’s violin concerto Graal Théâtre is also extrapolated into a multi-sense experience with lights, videos and libretto by Aleksi Barrière. The production has already toured the world and as the soloist we hear Peter Herresthal, Uusinta Ensemble conducted by the devoted Time of Music fan Christian Karlsen.

On Wednesday 3rd July in “Play echoes of another person” we dive into communication with the great beyond. Premiered in the legendary EXPO70 in Osaka, the cult piece of the analogue era Stockhausen’s Poles is performed by Camilla Hoitenga, Taavi Kerikmäe and Tammo Sumera. The name of the concert derives from the composer’s notes for performers. In the concert the audience has a chance to dwell in cosmic spirals in the middle of numerous speakers around the hall. The other composers in the concert equally have their very own ways of communicating with the other side.

In the world premiere artist’s life is seen through VR glasses

In the co-commission by Time of Music and defunensemble the audience has a unique possibility to follow artists’ work inside their heads. In the performance created by the top name of diginative generation Alexander Schubert the musicians are connected to the audience by video glasses and intercoms. The whole experience is spontaneously co-created with all the participants reacting to each other’s gestures, sounds and visions. The premiered installation is on at Old School during Friday 5th and Saturday 6th July, the audience changed every fifteen minutes.

In duo concerts Finnish and international stars scoop up their co-operational relationships

The themes of the festival are also studied in many duo concerts at the festival. The long-lasting cooperations between artists transcend the hectic and superficial discourse of today and dive deep into the processes of creativity.

A grand name of improvisation in different acoustics and spaces John Butcher brings two of his close cooperation partners to the festival. The mutual trust with the partner enables a free improvisation reflecting on the space and time of the performance. In previous encounters with harpist Rhodri Davies, the saxophone has for example been used as a filter for the harp or the harp has been played by the air from the saxophone. What comes out of the duet by Buthcer and the master of live electronics Thomas Lehn is still a mystery. Concerts “Chaos is the Spectre” on Wednesday 3rd July and “Exuberation and Extinction” on Friday 5th July.

In the Church concert on Friday 5th July “Secret Voices” cellist Jakob Kullberg and violinist Aliisa Neige Barrière build a mosaic of Concordia by Kaija Saariaho – composed to them and performed for the first time in Finland – renaissance melodies by Tobias Hume arranged by Kullberg, Barrière and Saariaho, Secret Voices cycle by Per Nørgård and other Nordic works for solo violin or cello. The new arrangements and the interlaced structure takes us onto a trip through space and time.

In the intimate concert on Thursday 4th July duo Tuuli Lindeberg & Petri Kumela is joined by Camilla Hoitenga in Saariaho’s Adjö. The Nordic works of the concert “Nordic Dwellings” brush up the light of everyday toils while remembering the master of melancholy John Dowland. The concert also includes a world premiere by Øyvind Mælandin ”det du trodde du aldri ville huske”, commissioned by the duo.

Other programme

As usual, the concert programme also includes final concerts of the courses held at the festival. In the final concert of the composer course Uusinta Ensemble plays world premieres by eight young composers. In the final concerts of the chamber music course we hear pieces by Saariaho and Stockhausen among others. What is going to happen in the final concert of the improvisation course we still do not know – there will be a lot of room for new encounters. The courses gathered more applicants than never before, over 123 applicants from 20 countries.

Aleksi Barrière

paakayttaja — Wed, 22 May 2019 15:06:29 +0000

Aleksi Barrière was introduced to theatre as an interdisciplinary art form while working as a performer, a dramaturge and an assistant to director Sarah Méadel, with whom he also co-directed he first show in 2006. Barrière studied Philosophy at the Sorbonne University and Stage Directing and Scenography at the Theatre Academy of Prague. He has collaborated among others with director Peter Sellars as an assistant, and with multimedia groups such as Image Auditive as a director and designer. He currently creates most of his projects within the music theatre company La Chambre aux échos, which he co-founded with Clément Mao-Takacs. In the last season he has also been invited as a stage director in international venues in Chicago, Hamburg and Bergen. Also an author and a scholar, his texts have been commissioned by various institutions and set to music.

Aliisa Neige Barrière

paakayttaja — Wed, 22 May 2019 15:04:01 +0000

Aliisa Neige Barrière was born into a French-Finnish family in Paris where her music studies included violin, piano, chamber music and choral as well as orchestral conducting. In June of 2019, she completed her Master’s Degree in Violin Performance with Peter Herresthal at the Norwegian Academy of Music, where she appeared as a soloist in Vivaldi’s Spring and Winter under the direction of Øyvind Bjorå, and from where she also holds a Bachelor’s Degree. Since her move to Oslo in 2016, Barrière has been been very active in Norway, where she was a founding member of two ensembles; Ensemble Temporum and Ensemble +47, mainly dedicated to new music, and since 2018 is the violinist of ÄÄNI-kollektiivi, based in Helsinki. In 2019, Barrière started her own festival in Oslo with co-artistic director Janne Valkeajoki: Nordlyd, a meeting-place between audiences and performers, for music ranging from baroque to contemporary and experimentation with concert form, especially curated for one of Oslo’s central venues, Kulturhuset. Earlier studies include violin studies with Renee Jolles, as well as orchestral conducting and chamber music, at the Preparatory Division of Mannes College of Music (2011-12), and as the winner of the Concerto Competition, she played the first movement of the Khachaturian Concerto at Symphony Space, New York. Also in 2012, Barrière received her Prix de Perfectionnement in Paris, at the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional, her teachers being Suzanne Gessner (violin) and Judy Chin (piano). In 2013 Barrière was awarded a full scholarship for four years of studies at Mannes College of Music, and she returned to New York to start her Bachelor’s Degree with Lewis Kaplan and Laurie Smukler (violin), Michael Adelson and David Hayes (conducting) and was part of the Mannes Baroque Players. Barrière’s diverse interests have led her to be invited to play in ensembles such as Barokksolistene, Ensemble Intercontemporain, or the Parisian Secession Orchestra. As of 2018, she also resumed her conducting studies and attended masterclasses with Atso Almila and Luke Dollman, and is currently studying under Jorma Panula at the Panula Academy.

John Butcher

paakayttaja — Wed, 22 May 2019 14:53:16 +0000

John Butcher is well known as a saxophonist who attempts to engage with the uniqueness of time and place. His music ranges through improvisation, his own compositions, multitracked pieces and explorations with feedback and unusual acoustics. Since the early 80s, he has collaborated with hundreds of musicians – including Derek Bailey, John Stevens’ SME, Rhodri Davies, Andy Moor (EX), Phil Minton, Christian Marclay, AMM, Gino Robair, Polwechsel, Eddie Prévost, John Tilbury, and Okkyung Lee. Alongside long term projects he values occasional encounters; from large groups such as the EX Orkestra & Butch Morris’ “London Skyscraper”, to duo concerts with Fred Frith, Akio Suzuki, Paal Nilssen-Love, Keiji Haino, David Toop, Otomo Yoshihide, Sophie Agnel and Matthew Shipp. Recent compositions include “Penny Wands” for Futurist Intonarumori, two HCMF commissions for his own groups, “Good Liquor …” for the London Sinfonietta and “Tarab Cuts”, a response to recordings of early Arabic classical music, which was shortlisted for a 2014 British Composer’s Award. The well-received “Resonant Spaces” CD is a collection of solo site-specific performances recorded during a tour of unusual locations in Scotland and the Orkney Islands.

La Chambre aux échos

paakayttaja — Wed, 22 May 2019 14:52:51 +0000

The Paris-based company La Chambre aux échos is a collective centered on interdisciplinary collaborations, that explores the entire range of the interactions between music and theatre, from staged concerts to music theatre and opera, immersive performances, installations and educational projects. La Chambre aux échos works mainly with recent and new music, and hence living composers. Recently these have included Kaija Saariaho, who’s La Passion de Simone’s chamber version they premiered and toured internationally, and Juha T. Koskinen, with whom they created the performance Violences for the Finnish National Opera. La Chambre aux échos is the only French collective led conjointly by a stage director (Aleksi Barrière) and a conductor (Clément Mao-Takacs).

Rhodri Davies

paakayttaja — Wed, 22 May 2019 14:50:57 +0000

Rhodri Davies was born in 1971 and lives in Swansea. He plays harp, electric harp, live-electronics and builds wind, water, ice, dry ice and fire harp installations. He has released four solo albums: Trem, Over Shadows, Wound Response and An Air Swept Clean of All Distance. His regular groups include: HEN OGLEDD, Cranc, a duo with John Butcher, The Sealed Knot, Common Objects and a trio with John Tilbury and Michael Duch. He has worked with the following artists: David Sylvian, Jenny Hval, Derek Bailey, Mark Fell, Kahimi Karie, Laura Cannell, Lina Lapelyte, Sachiko M, Bill Orcutt, Jim O’Rourke, Christian Marclay and David Toop. In 2008 he collaborated with the visual artist Gustav Metzger on ‘Self-cancellation’, a large-scale audio-visual collaboration in London and Glasgow. New pieces for solo harp have been composed for him by: Eliane Radigue, Philip Corner, Phill Niblock, Ben Patterson, Christian Wolff, Alison Knowles, Mieko Shiomi and Yasunao Tone. In 2012 he was the recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Grants to Artists Award, since 2016 he is a Chapter Associate Artist and in 2017 he received a Creative Wales Award. He is a co-organiser of the NAWR concert series in Swansea.

defunensemble

paakayttaja — Wed, 22 May 2019 14:49:52 +0000

Formed only as recently as in 2009, defunensemble has astonishingly fast established itself as one of the most important contemporary music groups in Finland. The ensemble’s vigorous mission is to systematically delve into the world of electroacoustic music. Defunensemble gives Finnish premieres of the most essential electroacoustic repertoire both classic and current, while simultaneously actively commissioning new works incorporating the latest technologies. With artistic director Sami Klemola the ensemble’s concert concepts have proven to be highly innovative, blending different sub-genres of the electroacoustic persuasion with an unprecedented street credibility—any dusty notions of classical music are soon forgotten. A serious professional undertaking, the musicians and sound designers of defunensemble are some of the most active personalities in the Finnish contemporary music scene. After conquering the major Finnish festivals, the ensemble is already gaining international pull, their concert calendar is filling rapidly.

– Jarkko Hartikainen

During its brief history defunensemble has already performed over 90 concerts and at over 20 different festivals, the most notable being Tampere biennale (FI), Time of Music (FI), Musica nova Helsinki (FI), Helsinki Festival (FI), Flow Festival (FI), Klang Concert Series (FI), Crusell Music Festival (FI), Nordic Music Days (FI, SE), dOCUMENTA (DE), chiffren – kieler tage für neue musik (DE), November Music (NL), Loop Festival (BE), Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (GB), Re:new music (DK) and Copenhagen Avantgarde Music Festival Klang (DK). Defunensemble has premiered works by – for example – Tim Page, Antti Auvinen, Hikari Kiyama, Ville Raasakka, Perttu Haapanen, Pink Twins, M. A. Numminen, Guðmundur Steinn Gunnarsson, Peter Ablinger, Christian Winther Christensen and Gilbert Nouno.

Peter Herresthal

paakayttaja — Wed, 22 May 2019 14:48:38 +0000

Peter Herresthal is recognised as a brilliant and inspired interpreter of contemporary violin music, strongly associated both in concert and recordings with concertos by composers including Per Nørgård, Arne Nordheim, Ørjan Matre, Henri Dutilleux, Thomas Adès, Harrison Birtwistle, Olav Anton Thommessen, Henrik Hellstenius and Jon Øivind Ness. He has appeared with leading orchestras and ensembles worldwide, including most recently the BBC Philharmonic, Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire, the Arctic Philharmonic Sinfonietta, Oslo Philharmonic and Stavanger Symphony Orchestras, with conductors including Andrew Manze, Thomas Adès, Martyn Brabbins, Anu Tali and Sakari Oramo. Peter Herresthal has given the Austrian, Norwegian, Spanish and Australian premieres of the Thomas Adès violin concerto ‘Concentric Paths’, the latter conducted by the composer at the Melbourne Festival. He has recorded a number of CDs for BIS and Simax/Aurora including prize-winning discs of Nordheim and Ness, and most recently the Buene and Wallin concerti nominated for Norwegian Grammys. His Nørgård recording was nominated for a Gramophone Award and was Editors Choice in The Strad and International Record Review. He has performed Kaija Saariaho’s Graal Theater with the London Sinfonietta in Bergen, Nantes and London, and most recently recorded the work with the Oslo Philharmonic. Peter Herresthal is a Professor at the Oslo Academy and visiting Professor at the Royal College of Music, London. He performs on a GB Guadagnini from Milan 1753.

Camilla Hoitenga

paakayttaja — Wed, 22 May 2019 14:44:54 +0000

Flutist Camilla Hoitenga is at home on stages all over the world, performing in venues as diverse as Carnegie Hall in New York, the Royal Festival Hall in London, the Kremlin in Moscow and the Forbidden City in Beijing, China. She is especially well known for her collaborations with composers like Kaija Saariaho and Karlheinz Stockhausen. She has premiered concertos written for her by composers such as Kaija Saariaho, Péter Köszeghy, Ken-Ichiro Kobayashi and Raminta Serksnyte with orchestras such as the London Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Royal Philharmonic of Stockholm, the Finnish Radio Orchestra, as well as with orchestras in Paris, Barcelona, Helsinki, Berlin, Kyoto, Tampere, Frankfurt, Vilnius, and many others, working with conductors like Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Susanna Mälkki, Alan Gilbert, Christoph Eschenbach, Marin Alsop, and Vladimir Jurowski, and has appeared at festivals from Ojai to Paris to Salzburg to Kyoto. Her repertoire ranges from pre-Bach to post-Stockhausen, from concertos to music for flute alone (Stockhausen, Eötvös), from state-of-the art pieces for live video and electronics with Jean-Baptiste Barrière or Claudia Robles to improvisations with Jean-Marc Montera or Taavi Kerikmäe to interdisciplinary projects. Her recordings, in particular those with Kaija Saariaho, have won awards in France, Great Britain and in North America. Camilla Hoitenga has taught at the State University of New York and at the Folkwang Hochschule Essen/Duisburg and continues to give masterclasses and workshops on various subjects for musicians of all ages.