Outi Tarkiainen is a composer who has one foot in the Modernist camp and one in the jazz camp. Several of her works exhibit, in a deeply instinctive way, an organic, innovative dialogue between these two traditions – an example being the title work of her acclaimed disc Into the Woodland Silence. Tarkiainen’s music is frequently performed abroad and has been dubbed to draw on the immensity of the northern natural environment. As if an evidence of this, her recent orchestral song cycle The Earth, Spring’s Daughter, inspired by the Sami poetry, was commissioned by the three northernmost orchestras of Europe.

• Outi Tarkiainen is the Norrbotten Big Band 2017 composer in residence
• Andrew Mellor: The voice of freedom (and interview of Outi Tarkiainen on FMQ)
• Andrew Mellor: The North in Music (FMQ)
• The three northernmost professional orchestras in Europe co-commissioned from Outi Tarkiainen
• Liebklinge on Vimeo
• Into the Woodland Silence on Vimeo
• Outi Tarkiainen's website