Timo Alakotila is a Finnish composer, arranger, and musician born 15 July 1959.

Career

Timo Alakotila's range of music styles stretches from Finnish folk music of the '' pelimanni'' style over some jazz influences to more or less Finnish style Tango (music)tangos, and with some extensions to classical music. He is one of the founding members of the well-known Finnish folk fiddler group

JPP J.P.P. is a group of Finnish folk musicians from Kaustinen. The group still uses the Kaustinen traditional settings with fiddles, harmonium and double bass, although their arrangements are more advanced than those of earlier generations of tra ...

of the Kaustinen tradition, where he plays harmonium, and in the similar group Troka. In both groups, he is one of the main arrangers and composers. Alakotila has worked with

accordion Accordions (from 19th-century German ''Akkordeon'', from ''Akkord''—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a reed ...

ist

Maria Kalaniemi Maria Kalaniemi (born 27 May 1964 in Espoo, Finland) is a Finnish accordionist. She was classically trained, gaining her MMus from the Sibelius Academy in 1992, but has become mostly known as a folk musician having played this music from childhood ...

for more than ten years in several formats, including a duo, a trio and the group Aldargaz. Kalaniemi and Alakotila play both their own and each other's arrangements and compositions, as well as some traditional material. Another of Alakotila's projects is

Unto Tango Orchestra Unto may refer to: * Unto (name) *Unto a Good Land (Swedish: Invandrarna) is a novel by Vilhelm Moberg from 1952 *Unto Ashes, musical ensemble based in New York City incorporating madrigal, folk, New Age music and Dark Wave *Unto the Fourth Generat ...

(''Tango-orkesteri Unto''), a tango orchestra that was formed to perform at Expo '98 in Lisbon, Portugal. This groups mainly plays Alakotila's rather chamber-music-like arrangements of Finnish tango. In 2004 BBC Concert Orchestra, JPP and Maria Kalaniemi performed music written by Alakotila for the occasion. Among his more "classic style" works is a folk-music/chamber hybrid, a concerto for accordion and orchestra, originally performed at the folk music festival ''Haapavesi Folk'' with Johanna Juhola as the soloist. Alakotila's piece, ''Pelimanni's Revenge'', was arranged by violist, Ralph Farris, for the string quartet

ETHEL Ethel (also '' æthel'') is an Old English word meaning "noble", today often used as a feminine given name. Etymology and historic usage The word means ''æthel'' "noble". It is frequently attested as the first element in Anglo-Saxon names, b ...

and was released on their 2006 album ''Light'' ( Cantaloupe Music).Cantaloupe Music page
Alakotila also works as a teacher at the Sibelius Academy and at the Helsinki Pop & Jazz Conservatory.

References

External links

Timo Alakotila on MySpace
Finnish composers Finnish male composers Nordic folk musicians Finnish keyboardists 1959 births Living people {{Finland-composer-stub