Time of Music Festival offers in the summer 2017 a unique opportunity to study conducting with Susanna Mälkki. Chief Conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic will tutor a rare masterclass for young conductors. Participating conductors work with an ensemble consisting of IEMA (International Ensemble Modern Academy) together with young musicians proposed from the EU funded Ulysses network. They prepare works by Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Thomas Adès, Franco Donatoni and Magnus Lindberg amongst others. Repertoire will be performed in concerts during the Time of Music Festival.
“Susanna has a unique view as former Chief Conductor of Ensemble Intercontemporain that has taken her everywhere from La Scala to Metropolitan. We are thrilled to welcome Susanna to Viitasaari next summer, when it is also the 100th anniversary of independent Finland. The course will gather interested musicians worldwide and is a perfect opportunity to offer the highest quality contemporary music education in Finland”, says the festival’s artistic director Johan Tallgren.
The guest composer and tutor at the composer course is James Dillon. The Scottish composer has been rewarded many major prizes for his compositions and he has an extensive career as a professor of composition. James Dillon is self-taught as a composer and has studied mathematics, art and design, linguistics, piano and computer music. His earlier music is often described belonging to the “new complexity” school, but later on he has become famous especially for his large scale compositions such as Nine Rivers, awarded 3-and-half-hour music cycle. Works by Dillon will be heard in several concerts during the festival.
Application for the composition and conductor courses opens 12.12.2016 and closes 15.2.2017. Both courses are part of international EU-funded Ulysses network project. The application info will be published at Time of Music website www.timeofmusic.org, where the festival will also publish the rest of the summer 2017 courses in January. 36th edition of Time of Music festival is organized in Viitasaari, Finland, 4-9 July 2017.