After two years of pandemic pause, the Time of Music festival was arranged 6th–11th July 2021 in Viitasaari. The festival, known for its focus on newest art music and interdisciplinary art forms, gathered an audience of 1135 listeners with concerts, installation and webcasts.
– Time of Music is a small and experimental festival, and we were able to transform the festival to a size answering the challenges of pandemic and make it nevertheless happen. I also wanted to create a festival which processed thematically the challenges and traumas of the pandemic, pondering the reactions to the current crisis, so that we could take a new fresh direction next year, summarizes the artistic director Johan Tallgren.
The program of festival was built in very short time, only in two months, after many international productions, funded by Creative Europe, had to be postponed to incoming years.
The existence of the pandemic was present in many ways. The festival was smaller, there was fewer concerts and part of the program was implemented online or transformed to an installation. Nevertheless, the artistic standards remained without any compromising on quality, thanks to Finnish top level musicians and uncompromising artistic design.
The festival presented five new premieres by Finnish or Finland-resident composers, some of them are available in YLE Areena until 15.8. Nagori Rengakai webcasts/videos, performed by Ensemble Extrakte and Tölöläb can be found at the Time of Music Youtube channel. The artistic director of the Nagori Rengakai project was Sandeep Bhagwati.
In all the events of Time of Music a clear sense of joy was experiences both with performers and audience – after a long time there was a possibility to gather communally around live music again.
In 2022 Time of Music will be celebrating its 40th anniversary. The festival dates are 5th–11th July 2022.
Further information:
Johan Tallgren, johan.tallgren@musiikinaika.org, Puh./Tel +358 40 724 6345