Jarmo Sermilä

Viitasaari, in central Finland 350 km north of Helsinki, is the home of the Time of Music festival. Founded in 1982, it is Finland’s oldest annual festival of contemporary music. But that is not all: it is also a continuing education event with a legendary reputation. Today, the courses given at the festival attract more top-notch foreign participants than the town can accommodate. Is this Finland’s Darmstadt – or something even better than that?

It is improvisatory music, such as jazz, that Jarmo Sermilä plays best on the trumpet and flugelhorn, and his status and focus as a musician is also probably slightly unconventional compared with the normal art music enthusiast.

The history of electronic music in general is yet a short one, and affords an interesting angle on the passing of time. Experiments made 40 or 50 years ago may seem to us rather primitive now, but how will the high technology of today look to those working in this field fifty years from now?