Photo by Mikko Malmivaara
Santte Salonen (b. 1993) is a composer, scriptwriter and performer from Helsinki. He graduated as Master of Music (MMus) from Sibelius Academy, Uniarts Helsinki in 2022. In recent years, Salonen has worked as a full-time composer and scriptwriter in Animagios artistic working group on Kone Foundation’s grant (granted in 2021 & 2022).
Salonen composes music using various styles, often knowingly crossing genres, but his most unique stylistic feature could be said to be the use of 18th and 19th century Nordic salon and folk music rhythms. An interesting example of this is the album Immortal Tradition (Bafe’s Factory 2022) by Ritva Nero, a band lead by Salonen playing ‘Party Metal Folk’. The album was nominated in The Finnish Music Publishers Association’s genre-free category in 2022.
Salonen’s main instruments are soprano saxophone and clarinet, and he has performed in more than ten different countries in Europe, North America, and East Asia with different ensembles. In the band Barlast, he has improvised and performed music for several albums and two experimental films by media artist Nina-Maria Oförsagd. He also works in composer-musician duo Salonen & Stein and folk music project Sysmä-projekti.