1/5/2024 0 Comments Sibelius student![]() In all times of my life as a composer, I always wrote the music that I needed to write. So the purpose of the Korvat auki group was to tell people, "Open up your ears and hear more music," right? What was your own music sounding like at that time? Did you feel any pressure to write music that sounded extra-"modern," as a reaction to the establishment? So that's why we founded this Korvat auki, "Ears Open," society, because we wanted different kinds of music to be heard in Finland, and of course we wanted our music heard as well. He really encouraged us to find all the different things that were happening in the world at that time, and that was basically impossible in Finland. I was studying with Paavo Heininen - who had been studying in Köln with Zimmerman and in the Juilliard School - whose mind was very curious. My generation felt that there was no place for us and no interest in our music - and more generally, modern music was heard much less. Kaija Saariaho: The problem in Finland in the 1970s and '80s was that it was very closed. Tom Huizenga: You've said that when you were starting out as a young composer in Finland you were a little annoyed with the modern music scene there. The work would later be staged at New York's Metropolitan opera, only the second opera by a woman heard there since 1903. Saariaho's blossoming career got an extra boost in 2000 when her debut opera, L'Amour de loin, directed by Peter Sellars, premiered to significant acclaim at the Salzburg Festival. ![]() After the Academy, she went to Germany to study, and in the early 1980s landed in Paris at IRCAM (Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music), founded by Pierre Boulez, where she began to develop one of her signature sonic landscapes - a seamless blend of electronic and acoustic orchestration. Her operas are staged in the most prestigious houses, her orchestral and chamber music is heard worldwide and her broad range of work is well-represented on recordings.Īs a shy student who nonetheless pushed her way into a composition class at Helsinki's Sibelius Academy, Saariaho decided early on that life would be meaningless if she didn't pursue composing. She became a master at harnessing it into some of the most colorful, dreamlike and arresting compositions to be heard over the past four decades. The Finnish composer, who will turn 70 this year, says music still swirls inside her. She'd ask her mother to "turn off" the pillow, thinking the sounds were emanating from there - but this music was her own invention, an early mark of a teeming imagination. She ended up becoming one of the most revered composers of her generation.Īs a youngster, when Kaija Saariaho laid down in bed at night, she couldn't stop the music churning in her head. At the beginning of her career, Kaija Saariaho had plenty of doubts.
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