BIOGRAPHY

​

​

TIMO HIETALA (born 1960) is a professional and critically acclaimed composer, arranger and musician from Helsinki Finland. 

 

His wide career contains a vast amount of productions in all medias and orchestras. He is mostly known for his works with over 50 films; feature, documentary and TV. 

 

Over the course of a long and varied career in film music,

Hietala has been nominated six times for JUSSI award, winning twice.

In 2016 he won the Grand Score Award in Berlin and has also received nominations for Deutsche FilmPreis 2011 and Nordic FilmComposerPrize 2011. Films with his music have won prizes like IDFA main prize 2015 and British Documentary Award ”Grierson Award” for best international documentary 2013 etc. 

​

Alongside Hietala's film scores he has worked successfully with drama music in theaters and radio. Especially his music and soundworks in the Finnish National Theatre has been a great success among audiences and critics. He is also known for his compositions and arrangements with symphony orchestras and has commissioned scores by Ensemble Intercontemporain Paris, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, UMO-Jazz Orchestra etc. 

​

Hietala has worked with the best Finnish conductors, classical and jazz instrumentalists and opera singers during his career and has his own group HumppAvanti inside the Avanti Chamber Orchestra originally founded by Esa-Pekka Salonen, Magnus Lindberg and Jukka-Pekka Saraste. 

​

In his works Hietala creatively combines different music genres; concert-, jazz-,improvisational-, ethnic-, rock- and electronic music, and is therefore held as the ”musical freethinker & maker” in the Finnish music scene.