The 2024 Time of Music festival offered stunning concerts, many of which challenged the traditional roles of the audience and performers. The week featured several top international contemporary music ensembles and musicians, including IEMA Ensemble, NEKO3, Decoder Ensemble and Hanna Hohti. The festival, organized under the theme Games of Participation, received an enthusiastic response from the audience.
The theme of participation was put to the test right in the opening concert on July 4, when composer Oscar Bianchi‘s piece Orango combined the IEMA Ensemble (International Ensemble Modern Academy), conducted by Raimonda Skabeikaitė, and the entire audience into a unified group of performers. The audience members courageously joined the performance, experiencing memorable moments through improvisation and open-minded engagement. The opening concert was a refreshing, communal experience for both the audience and the musicians.
The 2024 Time of Music ensemble-in-residence, the Finnish-Danish percussion trio NEKO3, presented two distinctive concerts at the festival. The world premiere of Matrix of Modernity by Walter Sallinen and Klaus Maunuksela filled the Viitasaari church with a spectacular celebration of rhythm, during which the audience was free to move around the church. Alexander Schubert’s Angel Death Traps, concluded the festival with an amazing firework of light and sound art. Both works included a significant amount of electronics and were heavily influenced by electronic dance music.
One last-minute soloist change occurred at Time of Music, when British composer-singer Laura Bowler‘s performance of her piece Advert in its Finnish premiere was canceled due to illness. British-Pakistani soprano Mimi Doulton, residing in Germany, stepped in to replace Bowler as the soloist to perform with Decoder Ensemble on just a couple of days’ notice, mastering the highly challenging piece with dazzling confidence and virtuosity. Advert is a bold and provocative work that examines the brutal marketing culture of social media from an individual’s perspective. Mimi Doulton and the musicians of the Decoder Ensemble fully committed themselves to the performance, which included dancing and boxing, and even featured a video of a tattooing event at the end.
The Time of Music Saturday evening on July 6 concluded with an exceptionally elegant Seidr concert in the Viitasaari church, where violist Hanna Hohti and sound engineer Anders Pohjola enchanted their audience with a program inspired by magic and Nordic mythology. The concert, consisted of works by Nordic composers, was simultaneously both a thought-provoking and a meditative, calming experience.
In addition to the concerts, Time of Music offered a series of talks. The opening seminar on Tuesday 2nd of July featured intriguing discussions about the future of contemporary music in Viitasaari. The discussion focused on the planned year-round Center for Contemporary Music in Viitasaari, which is the flagship project of the Central Finland Regional Fund of the Finnish Cultural Foundation this year. The city-organized seminar covered various aspects of the future institute’s operations, with speeches by project investigator music counselor Hannu Ikonen, composer Minna Leinonen, and Viitasaari’s mayor Helena Vuopionperä-Kovanen.
The Time of Music courses once again offered wonderful experiences for both the audience and participants. This year’s composition course was taught by Swedish composer Jesper Nordin, whose works were also featured in several festival concerts. American composer, oboist and curator Cathy Milliken, led a course in Viitasaari entitled Delight – fluid Spaces of Participation, addressing topics such as audience participation and the challenges of collaboration. In the final concerts of both courses, joyful and enthusiastic moments were experienced with new, high-level premieres and audience-engaging performances.
Just before the festival began, we received good news regarding the future of Time of Music. Since 2012, an essential part of the festival’s funding has been the Ulysses project, supported by the European Union’s Creative Europe program. As of late June, we learned that Ulysses Network will continue in the years 2024–2027. Time of Music will receive 303,000 euros in funding from the Ulysses Network, with 70 percent of this amount being EU support.
Time of Music warmly thanks this summer’s audience, artists, course participants, partners, supporters, and staff. The festival will be held again from July 1st to 6th, 2025.
For more information:
Artistic director Johan Tallgren, johan.tallgren@musiikinaika.org, +358 40 742 6345
