Profile

Ilari Kaila

Lecturer, Composer-in-Residence

Bio

Dr. Ilari Kaila works as Composer-in-Residence/lecturer on the faculty of The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. His recent works have been presented in a MATA composer portrait in New York with the Aizuri Quartet; at the Chelsea Music Festival in New York City and Taipei as the 2015 festival’s Composer-in-Residence; at the Metropolis Festival in Australia by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra; on the Avanti Chamber Orchestra’s tour of Japan; in Finland by the Joensuu Symphony Orchestra; as a Composer Fellow at the Intimacy of Creativity 2014 festival in Hong Kong; at the Banff Centre Summer Arts Festival in Canada; and at the 2014 MATA Festival in New York City. He has worked with artists and ensembles including Olli Mustonen, the Escher String Quartet, the Tanglewood New Fromm Players, the Albany Symphony Orchestra, the Kuopio Symphony Orchestra, and the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra’s chamber ensembles, among others, and has been awarded in the Mellon Foundation/ASO “Composer to Center Stage” competition, in the IC2014 World Premiere Concert Audience Vote in Hong Kong, and in the Composer Competition of the 9th International Piano Festival in Espoo. Kaila received his PhD in Music Composition from Stony Brook University in 2011, having previously studied at the Sibelius Academy in Finland. Before moving to Hong Kong, he taught at Columbia University in New York, and worked as a teaching artist with the New York Philharmonic.