Juhana Lehtiniemi
Musical composer
- Bachelor with commendation, Birmingham City University, UK (2008)
- Master degree in film music composition, Stockholm Royal College of Music (2010)
- Shadow of a Rose (2006), songs and orchestration
- Lemmikki (2015), script, songs and orchestration
- Mitä tapahtui Gro Janovichille? (2024), script, songs and orchestration
I composed my first musical Shadow of a Rose to the text of playwright Antti Viitamäki in 2006. This was also my first contact with orchestral arrangements and later led to my studies as a film composer. I wrote my first musical Lemmikki based on my own text in 2015. I am now composing my first full-length musical “What happened to Gro Janovich?“
Musicals remind me of animation as a story form. They have something of the same fantasy quality. If the animation shows a box drawn with messy pencil lines with eyes and a mouth, the viewer is very quickly interested: who is this box and what is it up to?
In musicals, it’s as if the songs recreate this delicious and naive atmosphere from animations in the world of people: the characters sing on stage and tell about their feelings through the means of songs and music – way more directly than in real life! Because of this combination, I think musicals are a charming way to tell stories.