Musiikin aika

"The festival has thoroughly taught me to question and to puzzle over what music actually is, whether considered as actions, definitions or delimitations. Even the simplest contemplation of the relationship between music, tones and other sounds, let alone their relationship to silence and other forms of expression and art, blew my untutored mind, and more than once I found myself reeling as I exited an overwhelming concert into the dusky Viitasaari summer night", writes Jari Hoffrén.

The Time of Music festival built its anniversary festival programme on the theme of diversity. Under the banner ‘Mundi Novi – New Worlds’, the festival showcased ideas and voices that often remain in the shadows.

"Could emphatic escapism in fact be the best reflection of the current time, where all of us wish that we were living in the past? Perhaps a symbolic farewell to that which is past is the best way to proceed to something new? Accordingly, the concerts at the Time of Music festival in summer 2021 will be memorial plaques of the future," writes artistic director, composer Johan Tallgren in his column.

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?

One of the international guests at this year’s Time of Music festival in Viitasaari is the music theatre company La Chamber aux échos. Its mission is to explore subtle connections between the various branches of the arts. Co-founder, director-dramaturge Aleksi Barrière considers collaboration with contemporary composers to be a key element in his work. Recently, one of his principal artistic partners has been his mother, composer Kaija Saariaho.

The Helsinki Chamber Choir has always been an ambassador for the most demanding contemporary vocal music and for Finnish music. In summer 2016, the choir is busy hosting the International Einojuhani Rautavaara Workshop and Competition and the Tenso Days festival in Helsinki in August.