In mid-April, as the fierce light of spring arouses nature from its dusty slumber, strange sounds are heard from Tampere. Finland’s second-largest urban area, with some 400,000 residents, hosts the Tampere Biennale every other year. This year’s festival, which runs 15–19 April, features 15 concerts and works by 80 composers. These include 35 premieres by composers ranging from the Sibelius Prize-winning Jukka Tiensuu (b. 1948) to Australian-born Marcus Hu (b. 2002). Beyond these concerts, sound art also spreads into the city’s Central Square, galleries and Pyynikinharju forest.

“As the festival celebrates its anniversary, it’s good to stop and think about where we come from and where we are,” says the festival’s artistic director, Minna Leinonen.

“In this age of algorithms, people seem to be increasingly isolating themselves from one another. So it’s time to consider, through art, the various layers, conflicts and repetitions of history within us – and how we’re part of them.” A guiding light of her artistic philosophy has been dialogue: an effort to reduce polarisation and foster understanding. At the Biennale, this is reflected in juxtapositions of contemporary music with other art forms. This year, those include folk music, free jazz, dance, musical theatre, spoken word, visual arts, literature and installations. Artists from different fields have been encouraged to plan collaborations at an early stage.

“The Biennale’s founder, Usko Meriläinen (1930–2004), had an idea that contemporary music should touch as many new people as possible, beyond its regular listeners. This is the aim of the family concert on our final day, where storytelling and contemporary music are in dialogue. A work composed by Jonne Valtonen for the bells of the old Frenckell paper mill will be played in an abridged version on the recess bells of a school in Tampere. Meanwhile 1,000 seventh-graders will take part in a sound walk called Taikatie ("Magic Path") by writer Anni Kytömäki and composer Pietari Kaasinen, along with the festival audience.”

A free atmosphere for finding one’s own voice

Leinonen moved to Tampere for the second time a decade ago. The first time was in the early 2000s, when she was among the first students in a composition class taught by Jouni Kaipainen (1956–2015) at the Pirkanmaa University of Applied Sciences (now the Tampere University of Applied Sciences). Before this, Helsinki’s Sibelius Academy was the only Finnish institution to offer a major in composition. Kaipainen played a strong background role in Tampere’s contemporary music scene, serving as the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra’s longtime composer-in-residence and as an artistic advisor to the Biennale in the 1990s.

“In Tampere, there was a calm, free atmosphere where you could seek your own voice. We studied scores with fellow students and made connections with musicians who could perform our works,” Leinonen recalls.

She later continued her studies at the Sibelius Academy, where the opportunities were greater, but where the aesthetic box of “the right kind” of contemporary music was narrower than in Tampere.

“When I was a student, the Biennale was an opportunity to hear thought-provoking music and discussions. They inspired me to explore the limits of what was possible and my attitude towards them. It was also splendid when the newly established TampereRaw performed my piece Three Capriccios for Wind Quintet in 2002. That kind of collaboration was really wonderful for a composition student in my twenties.”

This year, composition students take part in a master class with Polish composer Agata Zubel. And the opening concert features a piece by a composer studying composition here: the chamber work Maininki ("Swell") by Eelis Uusivirta, chosen through an open call.

Grassroots buzz

Several of the Biennale’s concerts honour composers who are from Tampere or have studied in the city. Besides Leinonen, Kaipainen and Meriläinen, these include Matilda Seppälä. The Tampere Philharmonic will premiere a work it commissioned from her, Hetki jolloin huomaamme toisemme ("The Moment We Notice Each Other").

“The communities, interdependence, presence and reimagining of orchestral practices in this work inspire me. It contains an invitation to be present in this moment –spontaneous reorganisation, communal ritual and the thrill of freedom,” Seppälä says. The previous festival featured her 2021 “hyper-concerto” For the Win for clarinet and string orchestra.

Seppälä moved to Tampere to study composition in 2011, later continuing her master’s studies at the Sibelius Academy and Berlin’s Universität der Künste.

“There was a very active grassroots buzz in Tampere, a kind of self-organising atmosphere,” she says. “At the Sibelius Academy, there was a massive proportion of theoretical studies and compositional exercises, while in Tampere, we spent most of the time on our own compositions.”

Students arranged performers to play their new works at concerts held twice a year.

“The fact that I had to look for musicians, network and get to know people was really good in terms of finding like-minded partners later on,” says Seppälä, who as a student co-founded the Tampering contemporary music association. Her time in Tampere instilled in her an attitude of boldly composing based on her own inner impulses.

“Jouni’s teaching style was that you told him what you wanted to do and then you worked on it. This strengthened my relationship with my own creativity and my own thinking, so that aesthetic conventions didn’t become an obstacle to one’s own voice.”

The Biennale venues are all within walking distance of each other in the compact city centre, which, according to Seppälä, creates a different festival atmosphere than in big cities.

“Many things are more direct and relaxed. Tampere’s music circles are like a village community – for better or worse,” she says.

Contemporary music must not isolate itself

Meriläinen founded the Tampere Biennale in 1986, primarily as a showcase for voices in Finnish music that would not be heard otherwise. It profiled itself more strongly as a festival of Finnish and other Nordic contemporary music, while its counterpart, the Helsinki Biennale (now Musica nova Helsinki) was more oriented toward Europe and America.

“Usko was from Tampere, and the festival was strongly linked to his personality. But today, I think the Tampere spirit is realised in how the festival spreads into different parts of the city and involves local cultural figures,” says Hannu Pohjannoro, senior lecturer in composition and music theory at the Tampere University of Applied Sciences.

He first attended the Biennale as a student in the early 1990s. Pohjannoro, who was an advocate of composition studies for children and young people in the 1990s, took over his current teaching position after Kaipainen stepped aside to become a part-time teacher in 2005.

“My first work at the festival was a nonet, Eilisen linnut ("Yesterday’s Birds"), performed by the Zagros Ensemble in 1994. My personal highlight of the Biennale was in 2024, when my chamber opera Birgitta was premiered.”

Pohjannoro says that the Biennale’s interdisciplinary nature was already evident in its early days, when the festival held concerts at the Sara Hildén Art Museum and combined music with dance theatre.

“The profile has also changed depending on the artistic director. For example, since the early 2000s, the club nights at Telakka have often included experimental jazz or electronic music. The artistic directors have had a mission that contemporary music must not isolate itself from the rest of the world,” Pohjannoro explains.

The Biennale is also kept fresh by its regularly changing leadership. Each artistic director is appointed for a four-year term, spanning two festivals.

“From the listener’s point of view, this brings variety and new audiences. From the director’s point of view, it’s challenging since the goal is building networks and international cooperation, which takes time,” Leinonen notes.

The share of Finnish composers has varied between 50 and 80 percent. Leinonen points out that this year there are an exceptionally large number of composers who have moved to Finland from elsewhere, adding to the international dimension.

“At the same time, we want to be both internationally open and profiled within our own city, which has great venues, a full-size symphony orchestra, two contemporary music ensembles, and many composers, musicians and other artists,” the director says. “It’s easy to bring things to life in Tampere.”

Translation Wif Stenger.