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Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg took control of the curating for the 1996 Meltdown, the fourth person to do so.

An important player in the international field of new music, he has a passionate interest in the innovative, which has taken him to the electronic hot-house of IRCAM in Paris, won him a raft of major awards and brought his music global critical acclaim.

Lindberg composed his first major orchestral work aged only 16, and was 24 years old when he first had one of his compositions, Sculpture II, performed by a professional orchestra. It was followed by the landmark piece Kraft, composed between 1983 and 1985 and notable for being written on a score that is a metre high.

Lindberg founded the new music ensemble Toimii and the Ears Open Society, which includes fellow Finn Esa-Pekka Salonen, who regularly appears at Southbank Centre as a conductor. He is famous for including electronic manipulation of sound in his works.

He assembled an astonishing line-up of performers to bring the full spectrum of radical Finnish culture to an unsuspecting Southbank Centres. Featuring major premieres by Lindberg and a host of new Nordic composers, Meltdown 1996 also hosted the London debut of the helium melodics of Värttinä and Finland’s answer to Spinal Tap, The Leningrad Cowboys. Avanti! accompanied a brand new print of Fritz Lang’s classic film Metropolis and the work of Heiner Goebbels was given a major focus. Toimii, Lindberg’s experimental collective, also made an extremely rare live appearance.

www.boosey.com/composer/Magnus+Lindberg
www.myspace.com/magnuslindbergmusic