Joonatan Rautiola, saxophonist

Joonatan Rautiola (b. 1983, Finland) began studying music in 1988. In 2000, he started his studies at the Sibelius Academy, under Pekka Savijoki and in 2004 moved to Paris to study with Nicolas Prost and Christian Wirth. In 2006, he became the first Scandinavian saxophonist to be admitted to Claude Delangle’s saxophone class at the Paris Conservatory. Rautiola studies chamber music with Paul Meyer and Eric Le Sage and has participated in master classes of Jean-Marie Londeix, Jean-Yves Fourmeau and Arno Bornkamp.

Rautiola has appeared as a soloist with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Tapiola Sinfonietta, Mikkeli City Orchestra and in several national TV and Radio broadcasts. In 2005, Rautiola gave his Carnegie Hall debut recital in the Finlandia Foundation Artist Debut Concert Series. Last year he played recitals at the Cankarjev dom in Ljubljana (Slovenia) and at the Ireland National Concert Hall in Dublin. Rautiola’s repertoire includes, besides 20th century saxophone literature, saxophone music from the romantic era, contemporary music from young composers and several transcriptions.

Joonatan Rautiola’s engagements for this year include recitals at the Conway Hall in London and at the Viitasaari Time of Music contemporary music festival as the Year’s Young Artist. At Viitasaari, Rautiola gives the World premiere of Olli Virtaperko’s work Crimes of the Past for alto saxophone and piano and several Finnish first performances. He recently gave World premieres of Yann Robin’s and Mandy Fang’s works at IRCAM (Paris) and has previously premiered works by Tapio Tuomela and Gerald Shapiro. He has also worked with the composers Christian Lauba and Gianluca Ulivelli. Rautiola was recently chosen by Ensemble Intercontemporain’s soloists as the saxophonist of the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra, conducted by Pierre Boulez, Peter Eötvös and Jean Deroyer, for this autumn’s Lucerne Festival.

Rautiola has won prizes in several international competitions. He won first prize in this year’s March at the Lempdes Saxophone Competition in Central France and last year in Paris, a third prize and as a special prize a concert engagement for 2008, at the Saxiana Saxophone Festival’s international saxophone competition. He is the only wind instrumentalist to have won the bi-annual Finnish National Radio’s Young Soloists’ Competition, the most important Finnish competition for young musicians. Last year, Rautiola received the Finnish Saxophone Society’s annual Josef Kaartinen –award for outstanding classical and jazz saxophonists.

Finlandia Weekly, Lee Alperin: "... immensely talented saxophonist ... there did not seem to be anything he could not do with the instrument."

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1st Feb 2009, St. Merri Church, Paris - Saxophones en fête - Festival