22/04/2013 - Most recently working on three US productions, Finnish composer Tuomas Kantelinen received the HARPA Award for his "wonderfully sensitive scoring" of the Oksinen adaptation

Finnish film composer Tuomas Kantelinen - who has most recently worked on three US productions including Russian-born director Sergey Bodrov's The Seventh Son with Julianne Moore and Jeff Bridges - last night (April 21) received the HARPA Nordic Film Composer Award 2013 for his "wonderfully sensitive scoring" of Finnish director Antti Jokinen's Purge during the Kosmorama-Trondheim International Film Festival.

Kantelinen, who has so far delivered the music for 84 film and television titles, was presented with the award at a film music concert at Trondheim's Olavshallen. "His music stood out because of its ability to convey with great sophistication, melodic sense and sensitivity the deep, emotional complexity of the characters and to underline the extreme hardship of the circumstances without ever resorting to easy solutions," said the jury.

An adaption of Finnish author Sofi Oksanen's novel, Purge [+see also:
trailer
film profile] took 210,000 admissions domestically and was Finland's official Oscar candidate. The five nominees for the €10,000 award, instigated in 2010 by the Nordic Film Composers Network, included Swedish former ABBA member Benny Andersson (the score for Kristina Lindström and Maud Nycander's Palme) and Icelandic composers Ben Frost and Daniel Bjarnason (for Baltasar Kormákur's The Deep).

Kantelinen, who has twice been award the Jussi - Finland's national film prize - for his film music; in 1999 the Finnish Art Critics honored him for the Most Impressive Artistic Breakthrough of the Year. Besides scoring commercials, he  composes classical music and operas - in 2000, his opera about Finnish long-distance runner Paavo Nurmi was staged to a 22,000 audience at Helsinki's Olympic Stadium.