Dear Friend of Time of Music!
Despite all of the challenges faced in 2020, this year has also brought many good things to the festival. These positive things make the future look much brighter, and we expect to be able to arrange the festival again in the summer of 2021. Here is some positive news from 2020!
EU Networks Across Europe
Time of Music has been a partner in Creative Europe’s ULYSSES contemporary classical music project since 2012. On June 3rd, Creative Europe announced, that the project will get an extension starting in October 2020 and lasting until October 2024. Total funding for the eleven participants throughout Europe will be 2 000 000 €, of which Time of Music’s share is about 165 000 €.
The project is managed by IRCAM in Paris. It includes residences for young composers and musicians, ensemble residences consisting of young artists, annual Ulysses Ensemble tours, new compositions, courses, and different kinds of communal projects. New partners in the third edition of Ulysses are one of Europe’s oldest contemporary music festivals Warsaw Autumn Festival and Mixtur Festival from Barcelona.
Time of Music is also the only Finnish partner of another large-scale Creative Europe project “Sounds Now”. We were scheduled to start activities within that project this summer, but unfortunately the plans were postponed due to the festival cancellation. Sounds Now is a network of 9 European music festivals and cultural/music centres that promote contemporary music, experimental music and sound art. It concerns with the way in which curation reproduces the same patterns of power and exclusion that are dominant at all levels of our societies, and aims to actively stimulate inclusion and diversity in our professional field and thus open up the capacity and possibility for different experiences, conditions and perspectives in shaping the sonic art that reaches audiences today.
Read more from the websites www.ulysses-network.eu and https://www.sounds-now.eu!
A Significant Four-Year Grant from Kone Foundation
Kone Foundation will support us with a significant grant during 2021-2024. Our project with the foundation is called “Curating and activism in contemporary music – a multitude of voices at Time of Music” and the support of Kone Foundation will total 190 000 € in four years.
The artistic productions will present and contextualize revolutionary and activist voices in the contemporary music field nowadays as well as during the times of the Cold War. We will commission productions together with the partners in the Sounds Now and ULYSSES networks, and they will include also Finnish artists. In addition to artistic productions, there will be residences, workshops, courses, and different kinds of panels and public discussions during the festival week.
Working on a New Strategy
The board of the festival organization began to work to clarify the festival’s strategy during the autumn months. A significant part of the process is to listen and be aware to the needs and opinions of our different interest groups. In November, we organized a virtual workshop together with the Association of Rural Culture and Education which gathered local interest groups from the Viitasaari region, and in the spring of 2021, the process will continue on a national level. The new strategy work is linked to, and a part of the preparation for the 40th Anniversary festival of 2022.
Summer of 2021 – what does it look like?
Preparing for the festival of 2021 is underway, and we plan to make the festival happen – in one way or another. There are many open questions and issues to solve, including the possible restrictions on travel and gathering together, but fortunately, there is light to be seen at the end of the tunnel! “As an experimental and agile festival publishing its programme as late as in May, we are able to think, plan and consider possible outcomes in ways that larger festivals cannot, and so maybe we will learn things from next summer which will benefit us in the future” says Johan Tallgren, the artistic director of the festival. “That we have two European peer networks who communicate on different questions during this time is of an immense help” he adds.
Due to the ongoing pandemic situation, the courses for 2021 will be published somewhat later than usually.
The Office
Ms. Kristiina Penttinen has been named the new Executive Director of Time of Music festival and the Summer Academy from the beginning of 2021.
Penttinen has been working as general manager of the Joensuu City Orchestra and Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra and as vice-principal of Merikanto-opisto music school. At the moment she lives in Pihtipudas and does doctoral studies in Jyväskylä University at the Department of Music, Art and Culture Studies.
Read more from our web site.
The 39th Time of Music festival takes place between July 6th to July 12th, 2021. We hope to meet at Viitasaari!
We wish you a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year, and thank you for this unusual year!