Brussels – February 2018

Kimmo Hakola was born 27 July 1958. He studied at the Sibelius Academy under Einojuhani Rautavaara and Eero Hämeenniemi. He entered the limelight after his success at the UNESCO Composers’ Rostrum where he won with his String Quartet and in 1991 with his Capriole for cello and clarinet.

Hakola’s music has been performed at several major music events and festivals, and portrait concerts of his works have been held in various locations such as Los Angeles and New York. His music was also broadly presented at the Stockholm International Composer’s Festival in 2008.

Hakola is a creator of intense musical dramas that recognize no stylistic or expressive limits. His music is a combination of exciting dramatic power and exceptional musical quality and musicianship. These qualities manifest themselves in all his achievements resulting in communicativeness and richness of sound, which speak of the composer’s delight at discovering his very own idiom.

Hakola has composed six operas. His work list also includes orchestral works and concertos for different instruments such as the Clarinet Concerto which has been a roaring success with several performances since the premiere in 2001. The latest ones are the Violin Concerto (2012) and the Double Concerto for violin and viola (2017). His other orchestral works include a Sinfonietta (1999), Verdoyances crepuscules (2003), Maro and KIMM. Hakola was also commissioned to write music to the Finnish silent film Tukkijoella.

Hakola’s large scale works include two oratorios — Le Sacrifice and Song of Songs. The first one was one of the three winners of the first Teosto Prize in 2003. Hakola has also written works for mixed choir, his most recent one is a 60-minute fantasia De kaspiska tigrarnas Gud (2013) to a text by Stella Parland. He has also composed vocal and choral music as well as chamber works, the weightiest of them being his four string quartets and the Clarinet Quintet from 1998. Hakola has been the composer-in-residence of the Joensuu City Orchestra. Furthermore, he has been the Artistic Director of the Musica nova festival in 1999-2006 and was awarded for his work in developing the festival by the Helsinki region Arts Council in 2006. He was also the Artistic Director of the Helsinki Chamber Choir in 2005-2007 and the Lux musicae festival since 2015. In addition, he also serves in administrative capacities, e.g. at the board of Teosto, the Finnish copyright bureau.

Paul Pankert was born on 19 November 1965 in Eupen, Belgium. He has studied violin at the conservatories of Liège (Belgium), Düsseldorf (Germany) and Maastricht (Netherlands).

As a violin soloist in the Dutch contemporary music ensemble “Ensemble’88”, he analysed and played hundreds of compositions including numerous first performances. He was able to explore just as many composition styles.

Pankert teaches violin and chamber music at the East-Belgian Music Academy. While for 20 years his musical activity was mostly focused on executing contemporary and baroque music, he recently started engaging more and more in composing music. Since June 2014, he is the artistic director for “Ensemble’88”.

His first composition “Spaltung” (division, splitting) — for two violins and harpsichord based on a symmetric quartertone-construction around the tone “A” — has been awarded with the “Prix de composition de l’Académie Royale de Belgique” in 2008. Since then, he realized many compositions — among which commissions by the “Orgelpark Amsterdam”, the “Ars Musica Festival” in Brussels, the “Orchestra Sturm und Klang”, the “Quatuor MP4”, the “Festival van Vlaanderen (B-Classic)”, the “Ostbelgienfestival” and “Flagey” in Brussels. A CD with his compositions has been produced by Ensemble’88.

Andrea Tarrodi was born in 1981 and is a Swedish composer based in Stockholm. She started playing the piano at the age of 8, and became interested in composition shortly thereafter. Tarrodi studied composition at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, Conservatorio di Musica di Perugia, Italy, and the College of Music in Piteå with, among other teachers, Jan Sandström, Pär Lindgren, Fabio Cifariello-Ciardi, Jesper Nordin and Marie Samuelsson. She completed her master´s degree in composition at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm in 2009. In 2010, her piece Zephyros for orchestra received 1st prize in the Uppsala Composition Competition, which led to several performances of the piece by different orchestras around the world.

During 2011-2013, Tarrodi was Sveriges Radio (Radio Sweden) P2´s Composer in Residence. A residence that included, among other projects, commissions from the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Swedish Radio Choir. In spring 2012, she was appointed “Composer of the Spring Season” in the Berwald Concert Hall. In the same year, Tarrodi received the Swedish MPA’s Classical Music Award of the Year — chamber music for her piece Empíreo for strings, harp and percussion. During 2013-2014 Andrea Tarrodi was the Västerås Sinfonietta´s Composer in Residence. In 2015, she received the Carin MalmlöfForssling Award.

Tarrodi writes for many types of ensembles, and is particularly interested in vocal and orchestral music. Her works have been performed by, among others, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra, the Spartanburg Philharmonic, the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, the Malmö Symphony Orchestra, the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, the Nordic Chamber Orchestra, the Uppsala Chamber Orchestra, Västerås Sinfonietta, the Stockholm Chamber Brass, KammarensembleN, the Swedish Radio Choir and Eric Ericson´s Chamber Choir. Tarrodi´s music has been performed in many different countries such as the U.S., Germany, Austria, France, the U.K, Norway, Iceland, Serbia, Portugal, Italy, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Turkey, Mexico, Japan, China, Australia and South Africa. Tarrodi’s music has also been represented twice at Östersjöfestivalen/ the Baltic Sea Festival. In 2017, Tarrodi´s Liguria was performed at the BBC Proms, Royal Albert Hall, by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sakari Oramo.

Andrea Tarrodi is a member of the Swedish Performing Rights Society (STIM) and the Society of Swedish Composers (FST).

Malte Giesen studied composition/computer music at the State University of Music and Performing Arts of Stuttgart with Marco Stroppa and Oliver Schneller, followed by further studies at the CNSM Paris with Gérard Pesson, at the HfM Berlin with Hanspeter Kyburz and electroacoustic music with Wolfgang Heiniger.

He was a fellow of the GdF MH Stuttgart, Oscar and Vera Ritter Foundation and of the Foundation of the HfM Berlin, Elsa-Neumann-scholarship Berlin. He has won the German Music Competition in composition 2009, the masterclass orchestral composition of the RSO Stuttgart 2012, the competition New Scenes III of the Deutsche Oper Berlin 2015, the composition prize Carl von Ossietzky the city of Oldenburg 2016 and composition prize of the city of Stuttgart 2017. He is teaching contemporary improvisation at the University of Music Karlsruhe and electroacoustic music at the HfM “Hanns Eisler” Berlin.

His works are being performed in Germany and abroad, among others by the RSO Stuttgart, Sonar Quartet, Quatuor Diotima, sonic.art Saxophone Quartet, Ensemble Ascolta, ensemble recherche, Ensemble Mosaik, l’instant donné, Ensemble Kuraia, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, Ardey saxophone quartet, Namascae Lemanic Modern Ensemble, SUONO MOBILE globally at various festivals, including Donaueschingen Festival, Wien Modern, Klangwerkstatt Berlin, AchtBrücken Cologne, Ars Nova Rottweil, blurred edges Hamburg and Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik.

Macedonian-born composer, violinist and educator Mihailo Trandafilovski’s latest album for Métier (upcoming in 2018) follows portrait CDs on Innova Recordings (2015) and LORELT (2011), featuring close collaborators Peter Sheppard Skærved, Neil Heyde, Roger Heaton, Roderick Chadwick, Odaline de la Martinez, Lontano, Kreutzer Quartet and the New London Chamber Choir.

His music has also been released on Clarinet Classics, SOCOM/Macedonian Radio-Television, Avalon Production (Macedonia) and Alliance of MSU Composers (USA). Performers include pianists Aaron Shorr, Ana Gaceva and Hajdi Elzeser, violinists Darragh Morgan and Mihkel Kerem, cellist Sophie Harris, clarinettist Linda Merrick, as well as leading contemporary music groups Pierrot Lunaire and Reconsil ensembles (Austria), Ensemble Horizonte (Germany), Quatuor Diotima (France), Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble (Russia), mmm… (Japan), ConTempora (Macedonia) and the European Contemporary Composers Orchestra.

Mihailo studied at Michigan State University (BMus) and the Royal College of Music in London (MMus, DMus). His studies and research have been supported by the Open Society Institute, the Macedonian Ministries of Science and Culture and the British Government (with a Chevening scholarship); among other awards are the United Music Publishers Prize for composition at the RCM and the Panče Pešev Award for best new work at the contemporary music festival Days of Macedonian Music.

He is a violinist in the Kreutzer Quartet, with whom he has performed and recorded extensively and held residencies at Tate St Ives, University of York and Goldsmiths College, among others; he has an avid interest in the application of new music to pedagogy, for which he was awarded his doctorate; and has led a number of shared projects among the arts promoting contemporary artistic creativity to a wider audience.

Helena Tulve was born in 1972. She is an Estonian composer, whose music is characterised by constant change and continuous processes. Her music grows out from simple primary impulses, being influenced by natural patterns, organics and synchronicity. No sound can be excluded from Tulve’s music: it can always find its meaningful time and place. Besides composition, she has thoroughly studied Gregorian chant and various oral musical traditions are still her subject of interest.

Helena Tulve has been commissioned by NYYD Ensemble, ensemble U:, ensemble diferencias, Netherlands Chamber Choir, Munich Chamber Orchestra, Nieuw Ensemble, Ensemble Vox Clamantis, Stockholm Saxophone Quartet, Gaudeamus Music Week and others.

Helena Tulve has worked in collaboration with video artists, written film music and released three albums: “Sula” (Estonian Radio, 2005), “Lijnen” (ECM, 2008) and “Arboles lloran por lluvia” (ECM, 2014).

The German musicologist Wolfgang Sandner has described Tulve’s music: “One of the fine qualities of her music is that much of it works as if it was not composed, as if it just happened, as if the instrument was playing itself rather than being played, as if the music was emanating from a set of wind chimes. In her music forms do not jostle their way into the foreground. Their structures are like rocks or trees: everything is self-evident; much is gnarled, much is beautiful; some things are mysterious, others plain as day. It begins, it develops, and at the end it possesses consistency — in memory. Hers is a music that could be installed in a landscape. Not only would it protrude, it would be subsumed.”