After a few years of travel dates never quite lining up, I finally had the chance to give a long-planned talk back at the Sibelius Academy — now that traveling is no longer an option and Zoom lectures the norm. A lot has changed at my alma mater in the last two decades. Hosted by my dear colleagues Matthew Whittall and Jussi Nuorvala, the lecture was something like the closing of a circle, and a big part of it was on the controversies and aesthetic fights between students and faculty in the early 2000s that eventually led to my moving to New York. The talk was in February but video of it was published on the lecture series’ Facebook page just yesterday.
Ilari Kaila, composer 