Ville Aslak Raasakka
*1 November 1977
Works by Ville Aslak Raasakka
Biography
Ville Aslak Raasakka is a Finnish composer based in Helsinki. His orchestral work gained a recommendation at the Unesco International Rostrum of Composers in 2019. Raasakka’s works are performed by the Klangforum Wien (Vienna), der/gelbe/klang (Munich), Mise-en Ensemble (New York) at festivals including Eclat (Stuttgart), Festival Archipel (Geneva), Nordic Music Days (Reykjavik) and the June in Buffalo and the Tage der Neuen Musik Bamberg.
In Finland he has worked with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Avanti! Chamber Orchestra, the Finnish Baroque Orchestra, The Helsinki Chamber Choir, defunensemble, the Lapland Chamber Orchestra, Tapiola Sinfonietta and the Tampere Filharmonia.
Raasakka studied composition with Veli-Matti Puumala at the Sibelius Academy and privately with Georges Aperghis in Paris. He complemented his studies on master classes with Helmut Lachenmann, Hans Abrahamsen and Georg Friedrich Haas and studied electronic music on the Ircam Summer Courses. He is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in composition at the Sibelius Academy.
About the music
Raasakka works with ecological composition. His current focus is in the formation, extraction, energy use, product use and dispersion of coal, oil and wood.
He has recorded and gathered sounds from coal power stations in Finland, coal mines in Pennsylvania, British oil rigs, packaging materials and cosmetics with petrochemical by-products, and forest logging and harvesting in Finland.
His musical practice involves making field recordings, orchestral and chamber music, electronic music and installations, implementing practices of site-specific arts to these formats.