Musica nova Helsinki will bring together contemporary music artists, works and phenomena
Finland's largest art music biennale, Musica nova Helsinki, will again take place between 5-15 February 2025. Bringing together Finnish and international contemporary music artists, works and productions, this upcoming festival will explore the power of collaboration, community and networks.
Held every other year, Musica nova Helsinki will once again feature a diverse range of contemporary music concerts and premieres between 5–15 February 2025, as well as performance art, discussions and other interdisciplinary programmes. The overarching theme of the festival is Together, reflecting everything that can form between people – for example, communities, collectives, networks, trust, hierarchies, tensions, interaction, dependencies and rituals.
"In the upcoming Musica nova, I want to bring forth the rich ecosystem of contemporary music and other art forms. This includes grassroots players, established large art institutions, professionals of different ages, students and young pupils, national and international networks of composers and performers, public and private funders who make artistic activity possible, as well as the audiences who, by their mere presence, form a shared magic circle,"" explains Tuuli Lindeberg, Artistic Director of Musica nova Helsinki. “The miracle of art and humanity is present when the whole becomes more than the sum of its parts.”
Festival to feature top contemporary music ensembles and the Musiikkitalo organ
Musica nova Helsinki brings to Finland the German Ensemble Musikfabrik, one of the top international ensembles in contemporary music. The concert on the closing day of the festival on 15 February will feature Enno Poppe's ambiguous Prozession, which took shape tacitly during the silence of the corona virus and will be conducted by Poppe himself. International guest artists at the festival also include the German Ensemble Recherche, which together with Helsinki Chamber Choir will premiere a work by Slovenian composer Vito Žuraj.
The sound of the new organ at Musiikkitalo will also resound at Musica nova, as Thierry Escaich, who has been appointed organist at Notre-Dame in Paris, will perform both with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and in his own improvisation concert. The organ will also play a leading role in Jan Lehtola's recital in memory of Kaija Saariaho, where, alongside works awarded in the International Kaija Saariaho Organ Composition Competition, we will take a look at the multimedia possibilities of the new organ and the concert hall, under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Barrière and Alejandro Olarte.
The diverse fields of contemporary music and art come together
International orchestral, composer and soloist guests as well as concerts by the main organisers of the festival, Helsinki Festival, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, the Tapiola Sinfonietta and the Radio Symphony Orchestra, represent one dimension of Musica nova Helsinki. The festival will also showcase a broad range of contemporary Finnish music from the field of free arts. Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra concert in 14 February will be conducted by André de Ridder and the soloist will be Carolin Widmann, violin. More information can be found in here. Ticket sales for the concert begins in 11 December.
In addition to the concerts of the main organisers, premieres by Finnish composers will be heard in concerts by Zagros Ensemble, Uusinta Ensemble, the Guards’ Band (Kaartin soittokunta), Superpluck, Tampere Raw, the Vicentino Singers, Key Ensemble and the new Suut-yhtye. In the opening concert of the festival, Avanti! Chamber Orchestra will introduce the audience to the world of rituals with Tuuli Lindeberg, Artistic Director of Musica nova Helsinki, as soloist.
The festival programme also includes numerous interdisciplinary productions, performance art and discussions. For example, the Sfäärit (Spheres) performance, which combines contemporary music and dance by Zodiak – Centre for New Dance, i dolci collective, Side Step Festival and Musica nova festival, will premiere music by Finnish composer Lauri Supponen and Lithuanian composer Justina Repečkaite. The Tulkinnanvaraista forum invites everyone, regardless of background, to rehearse and perform in one section of Cornelius Cardew's now classic music theatre work The Great Learning.
The ShadowNova (VarjoNova) project, introduced at Musica nova twenty years ago and now brought back to this decade, is also a concrete example of collaboration between people of different ages and at different stages of their musical journey. The aim is not only to bring the joy of making music together, but also to provide a stage for the next generation of composers and to make visible the work at educational music institutions. The project will culminate in the ShadowNova concert on 9 February, when the Zagros Ensemble will perform works by composition students from music institutes in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area.
Additions to the festival programme are released at the end of 2024 and can be found on the musicanova.fi website. The main organisers of the festival are Helsinki Festival, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, Tapiola Sinfonietta, the Finnish National Opera and Ballet, the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) and Finnish Composers.