Heli Hartikainen is an award-winning saxophonist, clarinetist, composer, and sound artist whose music merges experimental sonic textures with hypnotic, evolving soundscapes. As a saxophonist, Hartikainen is a passionate instrumentalist who continually pushes the limits of their instrument, themself, and the possibilities of sound technology ever further.
Their debut solo album CHRONOVARIATIONS, which utilizes 3D audio technology, won the Finnish Critics’ Association’s honorary prize ”Kritiikin Kannukset” in 2025 for the year’s most significant artistic breakthrough and was nominated for the Emma Awards, the Finnish equivalent of the Grammys, for Best Jazz Album of 2024.
Hartikainen has studied classical clarinet, jazz saxophone, folk music, and improvisation, and holds a Master of Music degree from the Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki. Their studies focused on ancient improvisational styles and the aesthetics of repetition in Finnish folk music, while also deepening their expertise in electroacoustic music, spatial audio, and live electronics. Their music has been featured at prestigious festivals such as Flow Festival, Ung Nordisk Musik and Nordic Music Days.
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KULTTUURITOIMITUS
”The instrument bangs, clicks, hisses, and puffs. Hartikainen creates spatial sounds and a contemplatively painterly soundscape. Indeed, they break boundaries. There’s an experimenter in them.
No matter how or on what format you listen to the album, it takes you on a sonic journey where you don’t really need to feel anything special; you can simply sink into a small nirvana with your own thoughts, meditate, and become enlightened.”
”While parts of this album could likewise fit in with the current “ambient jazz” trend, most of it is a tantalising mystery; indescribable, indecipherable long slabs of sound and melody, coupled with a sinewy physical and emotional power. — this is the one that really pushes forward the possibilities of the instrument. And with mysterious layers to be explored, it’s the one I’ll return to most in the future – a future that it boldly foreshadows.”
FINNISH MUSIC QUARTERLY
”And what kind of music was it? Beautiful noise from the saxophone’s keys, from the flow of air, and from the reeds of the saxophone. Strange sounds that echo through metal scrap suspended in space and are recorded back even stranger. A peaceful lingering around tones and scales, all captured in an acoustic space that gives both the sound and the listener all the space they need.
VÄLILEVYJÄ / YLE / FINNISH NATIONAL BROADCAST
I got to listen to the album for almost 15 minutes before I had to return to the soundscape of family life, and those were the best 15 minutes I’ve had in a long time. It was a cleansing ritual. The turntable, the vinyl, and the concreteness of the sound grounded me in this world, but the music set me free from it.”
”Helsinki-based Heli Hartikainen’s saxophone rarely sounds like one. Chronovariations sees them attaching electromagnetic speakers to scrap metal sheets and pipes, and using these objects as secondary sound sources. Low-pitched drones and hymnal sax improvisations are drenched in reverb and accompanied by spectral creaks, metallic rattles and shimmering effects.”
THE GUARDIAN
“Phenomenal – A true musical experience, as an immersive sonic world of ambience and experimentalism blends with an array of influences.”
THE MOST RADICALIST
”The concert by saxophonist Heli Hartikainen at the Sibelius Museum radiated refreshing soulfulness.
TURUN SANOMAT
The relationship between instrument, musician, and surrounding space feels like an industrial entity, with every gear and wheel locked into its role. The saxophone’s pads open and release air like factory chimneys, metal plates vibrate throughout the hall like an industrial pulse, and the entire performance space feels like one vast ticking machine. It feels as if everything necessary has been carefully considered in the performance and sound engineering.”
”Combining live looping, pieces of scrap industrial metal and surging waves of reverb and delay, Hartikainen and sound artist Esther Calderón Morales created an astonishing wall of sound – – Hartikainen explored the myriad sounds that can be produced by a sax, including popping the keys for a percussive effect that Morales looped and treated to create complex layers of sound. All the sounds apparently originated from their tenor sax, shape-shifting from a rich, warm sound to a rough-edged keening, at times echoing the more soulful side of John Surman or Jan Garbarek (ECM should snap them up while they have a chance).
JAZZ JOURNAL UK
– – mind-expanding journey”
Heli Hartikainen 