About

Concert music

Since the latter half of the 2010s, Valtonen has devoted most of his time to his own compositions.

Tampere Hall and the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra commissioned Tales from Moominvalley, an eight-movement suite for orchestra, children’s choir, vocalists, dancer and narrators, premiered on 9 August 2017 at the opening gala of the Moomin Museum.

In 2019 the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra performed his new score of about 100 minutes for Mauritz Stiller’s 1919 silent film Song of the Scarlet Flower.

His chamber and choral works include Mimesis for Viola and Performer’s Voice (2006), Culicidae Night for male voice choir (2013), and The Droplet and the Ocean for clarinet, violin and piano. The trio had its Finnish premiere in Tampere in February 2020.

Arranging for orchestras

Valtonen also undertakes orchestral arrangements. These include a violin concerto on themes from Octopath Traveler and an arrangement of Yoko Shimomura’s music for a Merregnon concert in Stockholm. He now writes game music mainly when the score can be recorded with an orchestra.

Valtonen has arranged for the Game Concerts series and other Merregnon Studios projects since 2005. In 2007 he arranged and orchestrated Sega’s World Club Champion Football, recorded in Prague with orchestra and choir. In 2008 he became music lead for Merregnon Studios’ live orchestra projects.

His work with the WDR Rundfunkorchester Köln includes: Symphonic Shades in 2008, Symphonic Fantasies in 2009, Symphonic Legends in 2010 and Symphonic Odysseys in 2011. Final Symphony premiered in Wuppertal in 2013 and has toured since; Final Symphony II premiered in Bonn in 2015. He wrote an original fanfare or overture to open Symphonic Fantasies, Symphonic Legends, Final Symphony and Final Symphony II.

Education

Awards

Memberships

Member of the Finnish Composers’ Association since 2017.

Other activities

He is a member of the band Mosaic Days.

He originated the concept for Calcophony, a scientific calculator app for composers, and is one of its creators.

Future Crew and the demoscene

As a teenager Valtonen joined the PC demoscene under the name Purple Motion. The name was inspired by the rock band Deep Purple. He was invited into Future Crew through the younger sibling of its founder Sami Tammilehto, and beta-tested Tammilehto’s tracker program. He was the group’s lead composer between 1991 and 1996.

He wrote the music for the Future Crew demo Unreal (1992), the 16-channel techno track in Panic (1992), and one of the two tracker tracks in Second Reality (1993), the demo that won the Assembly competition that year.

Demoscene awards

Demoscene works and releases

First game scores and Valtone Oy

From 1996 Valtonen took commissions from Finnish game studios, among them Remedy Entertainment, Housemarque and Bugbear Entertainment. His first game soundtrack was Remedy’s Death Rally in 1996. In the same years he wrote incidental music for theatre productions in Turku, most of it recorded with live ensembles, and played in an improvisation theatre group.

In 1998 he co-founded the music production company Valtone Oy with Timo Haanpää. He contributed to both volumes of the international Merregnon compilation, released in 2000 and 2004. In 2002 he received the International Fest of Cinema & Technology award for best original soundtrack, for Janne Ketola’s film House by the Sea.

Studies in Tampere

The Merregnon work brought Valtonen to a string-orchestra recording session in Prague, his first experience of arranging for an orchestra. It showed him how much he still had to learn about orchestral writing. His theatre work brought similar lessons: a clarinettist once suggested changing a trill, joking that the fingering would make him take flight. These experiences prompted him to study composition in Tampere.

Alongside his studies with Hannu Pohjannoro, he studied with Oliver Kohlenberg and Juhani Nuorvala and took masterclasses with Jouni Kaipainen, Magnus Lindberg, Jukka Tiensuu, Kirmo Lintinen and Michael Nyman.