In the run of years I’ve composed a large amount of music for all sorts of ensembles.
Orchestral music, big band music, chamber music, music for small jazz settings, film music, even children’s music.
(In this paragraph I describe my work as a composer in general. For a list of all compositions, click here.
In the menu above, you can also choose various categories separately.)
I wrote scores for three feature films and several shorts and documentaries (–> see the Films section).
Most of my film music was scored for small bands, which made it easy to perform the music also in live concerts. The film Stars Above by director Saara Cantell was performed on some special occasions with our live band playing my soundtrack. An interesting experience!
I’ve written several compositions for large or even very large orchestras:
For example my piece FEUER for orchestra and choir that had its first performance in January 2014 in Kokkola in northern Finland: there were 160 people on stage, 75 in the orchestra and another 85 in the choir.
Another example is the trombone concerto ‘Kurmur’ (2010) commissioned by Valtteri Malmivirta for extended big band or a piece called ‘Lumia Suite’ (2007) for symphony orchestra, folk music instruments and three singers.
In general I’m very fond of strings. I guess, being a jazz pianist gives me some sort of outsider’s perspective on that instrument group.
Building a brigde between the two musical orbits of classical and jazz has become somewhat of a mission for me.
Maybe this is most evident in the saxophone concerto Time Freeze, written for tenorist Manuel Dunkel, or the guitar/string quartet-composition Frizzle, Sizzle, Dazzle written for guitarist Teemu Viinikainen (–> listen to some excerpts in the player).
On the other hand there is improvisation.
A universe of its own!
The complete trust in the spontaneous inspiration of the moment…
Given, of course, that the musicians in question have a large enough vocabulary and, obviously, the necessary technique and courage to express themselves.
In such a case, I just hand out some guidelines and allow the imagination and intuition of the musicians to roam within the given boundaries, as was the case with my quartet Contemporary Collective and more recently with my new trio F# and my duo ‘The Hille-Könighofer Experience. The Contemporary Collective operated with a parameter chart, a single page of melodic, harmonic and rhythmic ideas, out of which we created an hour’s worth of crazy, beautiful, fragile, spaceous and experimental music (see one of our videos).
F# and the Hille-Köighofer Experience improvise without any boundaries or even guidelines: the musicians meet on stage as if it were the first time and start communicating. No plan, no agreement, anything is possible, anything may happen. (See one of our videos.)
(For upcoming concerts, please check the Gig Calendar.)
I’ve been lucky enough to have my music played by some very fine musicians! A big THANK YOU to all of them!
And in the middle of this little universe of music there’s me, the composer, the guy who comes up with stuff.
I love playing the piano. And I love producing sounds on no matter what source.
In the run of years I bought a collection of instruments – e.g. a kantele, little percussions, bowls, bells, triangles and more recently also some electronic equipment; no boundaries to what is possible on an iPad nowadays.
So, on my vinyl releases ONE (2011) and UGETSU (2016) I played all instruments by myself, all spontaneous and improvised. (On UGETSU I had a few guest musicians.)
Video artist Pia Antikainen made a documentary on the developing and recording process of the ONE solo project in 2011.
It still makes me happy to think back on these weeks and to listen to the weird/beautiful end result.
Check out these two little videos:
Sid Hille