Musica nova Helsinki, Finland’s biggest festival of contemporary music, will run in 2015 from February 6 to 14.

The theme for Musica nova Helsinki 2015 is Dialogues: between composers and performers, teachers and students, music and its audiences, generations, and different genres.

The festival is a survey of contemporary music from around the world today. Most of the performed pieces have been written after 2000. The youngest generation of composers dialogues with the established masters. There will be many world premieres, many of the works will be played by their original performers, and some of the composers will appear in a dual role of as a performer, teacher or lecturer.

Music Finland brings five international guests to Musica nova Helsinki.

Programme

The concert by the Zagros Ensemble will pay tribute to one of the leading names in contemporary Finnish music: Jukka Tiensuu. It will concentrate on some of his most recent works, composed this century.

Another leading Finnish ensemble, Uusinta, can be heard on Wednesday, February 11. Magnus Lindberg will conduct works by his friends Dusapin and Fred Lerdahl, along with the premiere of an oboe quintet by Riikka Talvitie. The soloist at this concert will be Nicolas Hodges, piano.

The defunensemble, notorious for shaking up the contemporary Finnish music scene, will be holding a club evening, playing works with electronics by composers of the youngest generation. They will also be highlighting some of the latest musical trends in Finland, the United States and Denmark.

Programme also includes concerts by NYKY Ensemble, Avanti! and the Helsinki Chamber Choir, Korvat auki association as well as the festival’s main organisers, the Tapiola Sinfonietta, the Finnish National Opera, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Klang concert series.

The festival will include premieres of works by Riikka Talvitie, Jovanka Trbojevic, Lauri Supponen and Markku Klami.

The Composers-in-Residence are Pascal Dusapin from France, Hans Abrahamsen from Denmark and Fred Lerdahl from the USA.

For the full programme, visit Musica nova Helsinki webpage.

About Musica nova Helsinki

Musica nova Helsinki is Finland’s biggest festival of contemporary music and one of the leading events of its kind in Europe. Held every other year, it was launched in 1981 as the Helsinki Biennale.

In 2013, the festival recorded a total of some 8,000 concert attendances, while a further 570,000 or so listeners and viewers followed events on the radio and internet.