Kaija Saariaho: I. Finding Her Music

Kaija wasn’t born into a musical family, in fact, her parents never made it to a single concert of hers. She was always pulled by composition, and spent hours in her room with a guitar trying to “find her music.” She nearly gave up at age 11, after reading a biography of Mozart and feeling woefully under-accomplished. Kaija imagined she would be a church organist in some remote town in Finand, and set off to study performance at the Sibelius Academy. Composition kept calling her, however, and she eventually found herself embedded within an impressive group of composer colleagues who pushed each other to discover newer, weirder, more innovative stuff.