Get to know the MuTeFest’19 artists
The annual festival highlights the artistic work of the Centre for Music & Technology (MuTe) students at Uniarts Helsinki’s Sibelius Academy. A showcase of the brilliant, imaginative and experimental concerts and events is also reflective of the creative power behind it.
MuTeFest’s “Department of approximate calculations” reports that there are around 100 people, including artists and performers as well as members of the production team, who make the MuTeFest’19 possible.
To whet your appetite for the upcoming shows and, perhaps to inspire you to look closer at the studies offered by the Centre for Music & Technology of the Sibelius Academy, we asked MuTeFest’19 artists to share some thoughts with you. Read on to know more about their sources of inspiration, favourite school subjects and see if any music below might be befitting to your own life’s soundtrack.
Alisa Nirman, screenwriting student, Aalto University
Imagine a film based on Alisa Nirman’s screenplay on 25.11.2019, 7 pm. Fiction and Music, Helsinki Music Centre, Black Box.
What is your source of inspiration?
“I like to play with stereotypes and mix together unexpected things. The complexity of human emotions, contradicting feelings, like obsession and self-sacrifice, or love and vengeance, things that shouldn’t go together, but do. I think comedy is in everything and the most tragic things are funny. I’m also very driven by genre.”
What were your favourite subjects in high school?
“Drama and philosophy. I went on to study philosophy in my BA but switched to a joint film degree after realizing the non-existent employment situation with my first choice. I guess I didn’t think hard enough about that correction.”
What music would be a good soundtrack for your life at the moment?
“I was recently in an improv class at the Theatre Academy, and one performance that we saw there featured the beginning of Toto’s “Africa”, but played on a loop, always starting from the beginning just before the lyrics begin. It resonated with me strongly, perhaps because it is an apt analogy for my life right now.”
Libero Mureddu, pianist, improviser and composer
Libero and his project “Hexad” ensemble will be playing improvised music on 26.11.2019 7 pm as part of the MuTe Alumni Discussion Concert, Helsinki Music Centre, Black Box.
What is your source of inspiration?
“It seems it’s often a mixture of different sources that include philosophy, psychology, science, technology and music, in various amounts and orders.”
What were your favourite subjects in high school?
“Literature.”
What music would be a good soundtrack for your life at the moment?
“In the past three days I’ve been listening Mika Vainio’s Olento, Pat Metheny Group’s Offramp and Radiohead’s Amnesiac. This evening I’d like to sit down and listen to Liszt’s Sonata in B minor played by György Sebők, a friend posted it on Facebook and it seems an incredible performance. Maybe a mixture of those records could be today’s soundtrack, with a hint of mathcore.”
Marko Timlin, sound artist, composer and performer
Experience Steve Reich’s Piano Phase performed by Marko Timlin on the 104 floppy disk drives on 26.11.2019 7 pm MuTe Alumni Discussion Concert, Helsinki Music Centre, Black Box.
What is your source of inspiration?
“The TAO.”
What were your favourite subjects in high school?
“History and English.”
What music would be a good soundtrack for your life at the moment?
“Tamia – Pierre Favre: de la nuit… le jour
Arvo Pärt: Tabula rasa
Autechre: Amber
Marc Hollis: Marc Hollis
Tritop: Rosenwinkel
Spliff: 85555
Baschet: Sound Sculptures
Bach: The Goldberg Variations by Glenn Gould (version from 1982)
Doc Scott: Mixmag Live! Volume 22
Neu!: Neu!”
Laura Naukkarinen (Lau Nau), composer and musician
Hear Lau Nau performing as part of the Synthestra (she has composed a piece for it too!) on 27.11.2019 7 pm Electronica, Helsinki Music Centre, Black Box.
What is your source of inspiration?
“Absolutely everything in random order.”
What were your favourite subjects in high school?
“Visual arts, especially working in the high school dark room developing photographs.”
What music would be a good soundtrack for your life at the moment?
“Laurie Spiegel: The Expanding Universe”
Áslaug Magnúsdóttir, composer and performer
See Áslaug performing in the piece she has composed on 29.11.2019 7 pm
as part of the Cross-art and technology concert, Helsinki Music Centre, Black Box.
What is your source of inspiration?
“People around me, my mom, friends, fellow students and my relationships to them. My bad decisions, keep me active trying to make things ok again. Conversation, dialogs, conflicts. To read, to listen.”
What were your favourite subjects in high school?
“Icelandic and biology.”
What music would be a good soundtrack for your life at the moment?
“I don’t listen to music at the moment. It comes in phases, either I listen a lot or to nothing at all. I believe I’m coming out from the silence and I’ll start to listen again. There is some great freedom in silence. “Love” by Mica Levi comes to mind. It’s the soundtrack from the movie Under the skin from 2014. The track just floats. you don’t know if you are sinking or being lifted up, like a lucid dream. A person on the internet said it sounded like two distorted whales, a thousand miles apart, singing to each other. I believe whales are gods, sad and happy at the same time.”