Pertti Jalava

Last updated
Pertti Jalava
Born1960
Era 21st century, contemporary

Pertti Jalava (born 1960) is Finnish composer who has written numerous works for various chamber ensembles choral groups and orchestra, including five symphonies and a piano concerto. He wrote music for jazz and big band line-ups. Stylistically he keeps these genres separate, he does allow influences to travel between the two.

Contents

Career

Jalava studied composition almost entirely on his own. In 1993, having already created an extensive repertoire influenced by jazz and classical music for his jazz ensembles, he studied theatre composition with the American Craig Bohmler on a six-month course run by the Finnish Music Theatre Association. As his final assignment he composed a chamber opera called Paradise. Having completed this course, a turning point in his career, Jalava embarked on an intensive course of private study and attended composition laboratories held by the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra and the University of Turku in 1994, 1996 and 1998.

Pertti Jalava won a number of prizes in Finnish and international composition competitions with works for string orchestra, wind orchestra, chamber ensemble, jazz ensemble and big band. Works by him have been performed by many orchestras and ensembles in Finland and abroad. He has been a full-time composer since 2001.

A Finnish record label Alba released "In The Wind" with four of Jalava's works for string orchestra and soloists (piano and flute) to positive reviews.

Themes

Jalava lists his primary objectives as emotional and narrative expression. He uses strong contrasts, thereby achieving dramatic effects and aesthetic accents. He uses distorted harmonies, sharp timbres and aggressive rhythms. Rhythm occupies a major role in Jalava's music. It is often motor-like and frequently asymmetric. [1]

Despite drawing mainly on twelve-note techniques, most of Jalava's classical works create a feeling of tonality. In his later compositions he often lets their nature determine the music or employs other methods of his own devising, assigning row technique only a secondary role.

See also

Related Research Articles

Michael Daugherty American composer, pianist, and teacher

Michael Kevin Daugherty is an American composer, pianist, and teacher. He is influenced by popular culture, Romanticism, and Postmodernism. Daugherty's notable works include his Superman comic book-inspired Metropolis Symphony for Orchestra (1988–93), Dead Elvis for Solo Bassoon and Chamber Ensemble (1993), Jackie O (1997), Niagara Falls for Symphonic Band (1997), UFO for Solo Percussion and Orchestra (1999) and for Symphonic Band (2000), Bells for Stokowski from Philadelphia Stories for Orchestra (2001) and for Symphonic Band (2002), Fire and Blood for Solo Violin and Orchestra (2003) inspired by Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, Time Machine for Three Conductors and Orchestra (2003), Ghost Ranch for Orchestra (2005), Deus ex Machina for Piano and Orchestra (2007), Labyrinth of Love for Soprano and Chamber Winds (2012), American Gothic for Orchestra (2013), and Tales of Hemingway for Cello and Orchestra (2015). Daugherty has been described by The Times (London) as "a master icon maker" with a "maverick imagination, fearless structural sense and meticulous ear."

Aulis Sallinen Finnish composer of contemporary classical music

Aulis Sallinen is a Finnish contemporary classical music composer. His music has been variously described as "remorselessly harsh", a "beautifully crafted amalgam of several 20th-century styles", and "neo-romantic". Sallinen studied at the Sibelius Academy, where his teachers included Joonas Kokkonen. He has had works commissioned by the Kronos Quartet, and has also written seven operas, eight symphonies, concertos for violin, cello, flute, horn, and English horn, as well as several chamber works. He won the Nordic Council Music Prize in 1978 for his opera Ratsumies.

Mikko Kyösti Heiniö is a Finnish composer and musicologist.

Erwin Schulhoff Czech composer and pianist

Erwin Schulhoff was a Czech composer and pianist. He was one of the figures in the generation of European musicians whose successful careers were prematurely terminated by the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany and whose works have been rarely noted or performed.

Buxton Orr was a Glasgow-born Anglo-Scottish composer and teacher.

Billy Childs

William Edward Childs is an American jazz pianist, composer, arranger and conductor from Los Angeles, California, United States.

Marjan Mozetich is a Canadian composer. Mozetich has written music for theatre, film and dance, as well as many symphonic works, chamber music, and solo pieces. He has also written compulsory competition pieces for the 1992 Banff String Quartet Competition and the 1995 Montreal International Music Competition. Co-founder of Arraymusic in Toronto, Mozetich served as their artistic director from 1976 to 1978. After his work with Array, he worked for some time at the University of Toronto music library, and he then became a freelance composer. Mozetich moved to Howe Island, near Kingston, Ontario, and has taught composition at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario from 1991 to 2010. He has won several awards, including the first prize in the CAPAC (SOCAN)-Sir Ernest MacMillan Award. His major compositions include Fantasia... sul linguaggio perduto, and Postcards from the Sky.

Matthew John Hindson AM is an Australian composer.

Jukka Santeri Tiensuu is a Finnish contemporary classical composer, harpsichordist, pianist and conductor.

Yitzhak Yedid Musical artist

Yitzhak Yedid is an Israeli-Australian contemporary classical music composer and improvising pianist.

Joe Cutler is a British composer who studied music at the Universities of Huddersfield and Durham, before a scholarship at the Chopin Academy in Warsaw, Poland. He has taught composition at the Birmingham Conservatoire since 2000, and since 2005 he has been the Head of Composition there. He is also the co-founder of the instrumental ensemble Noszferatu.

Boris Papandopulo Croatian composer

Boris Papandopulo was a Croatian composer and conductor of Greek and Russian Jewish descent. He was the son of Greek nobleman Konstantin Papandopulo and Croatian opera singer Maja Strozzi-Pečić and one of the most distinctive Croatian musicians of the 20th century. Papandopulo also worked as music writer, journalist, reviewer, pianist and piano accompanist; however, he achieved the peaks of his career in music as a composer. His composing oeuvre is imposing : with great success he created instrumental, vocal and instrumental, stage music and film music. In all these kinds and genres he left a string of anthology-piece compositions of great artistic value.

Robert Paterson is an American composer of contemporary classical music, as well as a conductor and percussionist. His catalog includes over 100 compositions. He has been called a "modern day master" and is primarily known for his colorful orchestral works, large body of chamber music and clear vocal writing in his operas, choral works, vocal chamber works and song cycles.

Victor Albert Davies is a Canadian composer, pianist, and conductor, best known for his opera Transit of Venus and The Mennonite Piano Concerto.

Third stream is a music genre that is a fusion of jazz and classical music. The term was coined in 1957 by composer Gunther Schuller in a lecture at Brandeis University. Improvisation is generally seen as a vital component of third stream.

Bernard Howard Gilmore was an American composer, conductor, French horn player, and Professor Emeritus of music at the University of California, Irvine. He is best known for his compositions, including Five Folk Songs for Soprano and Band which has become a reputable work in contemporary band music repertoire.

Daniel Rojas is a Chilean-born Australian pianist and composer. Rojas' work as a composer and improviser draws upon indigenous, folk, popular and classical Latin American traditions.

Mansoor Hosseini

Mansoor Hosseini is an Iranian-Swedish percussionist and composer of classical music, born in Iran, who studied in Paris and Brussels. His works comprise chamber music and orchestral pieces. He founded the Ensemble Themus in Gothenburg, focussed on theatrical music.

James Scott Syler is an American composer fluent in many genres of music including Wind Ensemble, Choral, Orchestral, and Chamber Music.

Christopher Schmitz

Christopher Alan Schmitz is an American composer and winner of the 2007 Sammy Nestico Award in Jazz Composition. He is currently a professor of music theory at Mercer University, having previously taught at Southwestern College in Kansas.

References

  1. Music Finland