JUHANI SILVOLA

BioG

​Juhani Silvola is an Oslo/Nesodden-based Finnish/Norwegian composer, musician, and record producer working across a wide variety of genres and disciplines. He has studied at the Norwegian Academy of Music (NMH) in Oslo, and has a bachelor's degree in jazz guitar (2002-2008), and two master's degrees: (i) Composition of Electroacoustic Contemporary Music with Natasha Barrett as supervisor (2016-2018), and (ii) Music Theory with Ram Reuven as supervisor (2022-2025). Silvolas work divides into following main categories:

FOLK/TRADITIONAL MUSIC

Juhani is an internationally renowned folk music guitarist working within scottish, norwegian, and nordic traditions. Main projects are:

Sarah-Jane Summers & Juhani Silvola

Summers & Silvola is an internationally acclaimed and pioneering traditional music duo that also works across genres and disciplines. We have performed together since 2010, released five critically acclaimed albums, won the 2022 NOPA Music Prize, been nominated for a 2021 Norwegian Spellemann Award in the Traditional Music category, and received four Top Of The Worlds from Songlines Magazine. We have also composed four extended works for string ensembles in which we appear as soloists, which integrate scottish and nordic traditional music, classical chamber music, and experimental/contemporary music: 

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Interwoven (2025, string quartet, 45min, 4 movements)

Commissioned by the Canadian new music specialists Bozzini Quartet. Played 4 times, album recording to be released autumn 2027.

Spirit Multitude (2024, string orchestra, 22min, 1 movement)

Commissioned by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, played at Tectonics Festival Glasgow, May 2024, with conductor Ilan Volkov.

How to Raise the Wind (2022, string quintet, 43min, 7 movements)

Commissioned by Nordlysfestivalen 2022, played 12 times in Norway & Scotland. Second movement won NOPAs Music Prize 2022. Album version (released 2025) won The Instrumental Album of The Year at Fatea Magazine was among the 5 best folk-music records of the year at The Scotsman newspaper.

Sølvstrøk (2020, string orchestra, 48min, 10 movements)

Played at Oslo World 2020 and Førdefestivalen 2021. Album version received Top of the World from Songlines Magazine.

Torgeir Vassvik & Juhani Silvola

They have played together since 2022, combining traditional joik with experimental jazz/improvisation and shoegaze/noise rock. Their album White (2024) received a rating of 5.5 in Klassekampen and was named one of the year's best albums by veteran music journalist Arvid Skancke-Knutsen. They have performed at sold-out venues such as the Liège Philharmonic and the Alte Oper in Frankfurt, at major folk and world music festivals like WOMAD and Viljandi, and at metal clubs and techno festivals; this past summer, they composed and performed the music for the theater production HUND by Marianne Meløy at Gjesvær, near the North Cape.

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Silvola also plays/has played with, among others, Aasmund Nordstoga/Ingebjørg Lognvik Reinholdt (Reitir), Siskin Quartet, Erlend Viken Trio, Irene Tillung's Ti På Taket, Adjagas, Frikar, Sigrid Moldestad etc etc.

JAZZ & EXPERIMENTAL POP/ROCK

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Silvola co-produced and played on Susanna Wallumrød's critically acclaimed Meditations On Love (which won the prestigious Spellemanprisen award in Åpen Klasse in 2024). He also plays regular duo concerts with Susanna, and also plays keyboards and guitar in Susanna's quintet performing the music from Meditations On Love.

He plays in Frode Haltli's Avant Folk (who recently recorded their fourth album), and has toured in the band of norwegian trumpet-legend Nils Petter Molvær.

Juhani has released two two albums with music for solo prepared guitar (Wolf Hour Roundelay, 2022 & Imaginary Archives, 2017), and three duo-albums with drummer Jonas Sjøvaag. His first solo-album, Strange Flowers (2016), is a mix of desert blues, doom, krautrock, and electronic music, and he played in the cult experimental rock-band Sacred Harp alongside Jessica Sligter and Øystein Skar around 2010. He has also started Juhani Silvola Trio, with Sondre Meisfjord (double bass) & Jonas Sjøvaag (drums).

Silvola has also co-produced and mixed several other high-profile albums, including Highasakite's debut All That Floats Will Rain (2012)

ELECTROACOUSTIC & EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC

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Silvola’s electroacoustic music explores themes of post-humanism, (mediated) nature, processes of growth/decay, and tensions between states of stasis & states of struggle. In his instrumental work, he is concerned with rhythm and phrasing in their widest sense, idiosyncratic melodic trajectories, and the creation of the deepest, most animated timbres & textures as possible.

His albums with electroacoustic works, Post-Biological Wildlife (2019) & The Slow Smokeless Burning of Decay (2021), were both among the 20 best albums at the contemporary music website 5against4. Silvola has written commissions for, among others, Nordic Music Days 2019, Pinquins, SISU, Riksscenen, and EAU.

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