Ilari Kaila
Ilari Kaila received his Ph.D. in Music Composition from Stony Brook University in December 2010, having previously studied at the Sibelius Academy in his native Finland. During the 2013-14 concert season, his works are performed at the Metropolis Festival in Australia by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra; on the Avanti! Chamber Orchestra's tour of Japan in Yokohama and Kanagawa; in Finland by the Joensuu City Orchestra; in Hong Kong as one of six young Composer Fellows featured in the "Intimacy of Creativity 2014" program; and at the MATA Festival in New York City, among others. His music has been performed by the Escher String Quartet, the Uusinta Chamber Ensemble, the Albany Symphony Orchestra, the Kuopio Symphony Orchestra, the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra's chamber ensembles, and the Stony Brook Symphony Orchestra. Kaila has been awarded, most recently, in the Mellon Foundation/ASO "Composer to Center Stage" competition, and in the Composer Competition of the 9th International Piano Festival in Espoo, and has received the American-Scandinavian Foundation Fellowship, a commission grant from the National Council for Music in Finland, the Thayer Fellowship and Patricia Kerr Ross Award from SUNY, and the Cite Internationale des Arts residency in Paris. He has participated in master classes with Magnus Lindberg and Esa-Pekka Salonen, and studied Carnatic music on several trips to India between 2002 and 2011. As a pianist, Kaila has performed in premieres of his own and other young composers' works, and in various improvisation projects. In addition to teaching harmony, counterpoint and musicianship at Columbia University, Kaila works for the New York Philharmonic as a teaching artist in composition, both in the U.S. and within an ongoing collaborative project with partners in Finland, including the Sibelius Academy, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Helsinki Philharmonic, and the National Opera. He is also a new adjunct faculty member at Stony Brook University, where he teaches graduate courses in advanced counterpoint to composers, and post-tonal music analysis.