Mikko Sarvanne

My name is Mikko Sarvanne, and I am a composer and multi-instrumentalist. I am always working towards something new, and this residency is no exception. I am driven by a desire to exist as a whole human being – a feeling and thinking body within a community. I want to build small moments of wonder in this frightful world in which we find ourselves. There is always time for wonder and joie de vivre – now perhaps more than ever.

I have produced a lot of sheet music for other musicians to perform. Right now, however, I find myself incapable of being involved in music institutions or writing sheet music. I feel like the future and the past are crushing me into tiny fragments of rock, which is why I now want to make music about rocks and the flow of water between rocks.

There are cloudy days and there are sunny days, and when the sun is out, it projects a 12 FPS strobe animation of the sea on the walls, which makes me want to stop everything else and just dance. The sun reveals what is always in the walls: the sea, which you can see when the sun is out.

I want to reveal the essence of rocks and water in the same way that the sun reveals the essence of reality. Techno and spherical harmony are inherent in rubble, ready to be brought out at any moment. I want to reveal them, and to make people stop and just listen.

I intend to spend this residency working on my solo music, recording and manipulating the sounds of rocks and water. I may well move on to other sounds, too, but I will start with the sounds of rocks and water. I will be making both field recordings and studio recordings. I also work with electronic instruments, including a modular synthesiser and experimental instruments that I have built myself.

For composer Mikko Sarvanne, music is about places: abstract, invisible spaces of harmony and tangible, physical spaces that are constructed through performance. He is currently particularly interested in experimental instrument making, spatial orientation and the strengthening and exploration of performers’ embodied agency.

Sarvanne leads the Mikko Sarvanne Garden collective, a group of today’s brightest jazz and contemporary music stars. His compositions on the group’s debut album Heräämisen valkea myrsky (‘The White Storm of Awakening’) were awarded the prestigious Teosto Prize in the spring of 2023.

Sarvanne has received commissions from, for example, the Soiva Metsä Festival, the Kamarikesä Festival, the Sointi Jazz Orchestra & Helsinki Chamber Choir, the UMO Helsinki Jazz Orchestra, the Versoi Ensemble string quartet and the Alder Ego jazz quartet. An experimental instrument installation built by Sarvanne, titled Karhulankordi & Kaksi sointia (‘The Karhula Chord & Two Timbres’), is on display at the Mustarinda artist residence in Hyrynsalmi in the autumn of 2025.

In 2025, Mikko Sarvanne has received grants from sponsors such as the Kone Foundation, the Arts Promotion Centre Finland, the Teosto Cultural Foundation and the Finnish Music Foundation. He holds a Master of Music degree from the Sibelius Academy’s Jazz Department, with a major in composition and main teachers including Kari Heinilä, Tapani Länsiö and Antti Auvinen.