Delta Life Performers

Jukka Takalo | Artistic Director, Scriptwriting
The desire to illuminate the invisible and create hope has been a theme running throughout Jukka Takalo’s career. Joy and smiles, love, and all kinds of small and large attempts at saving the world, often with quirky humor; everyday life, fatherhood, and air guitar. Northern landscapes, stories of hills, river valleys, and seas. Jukka Takalo describes himself as a poet. He became known as a singer-songwriter and performing artist through nearly 3,000 concerts, first with the band Aknestik and later through his solo career. As a writer, his career includes four published works; as a music video director, nearly one hundred works. He has also created numerous scripts and event concepts—from projects in his hometown of Martinniemi to the Air Guitar World Championships.

Mikko Makkonen | Choreographic Direction
Mikko Makkonen works as a dancer, choreographer, and dance teacher. His dance background lies in break dance and street dance, through which he has performed and competed nationally and internationally. As a dancer, Makkonen has worked in productions by numerous art institutions and choreographers. His choreographies have been presented in productions on the independent dance scene, at Kuopio City Theatre, Tanssiteatteri Minimi, and Zodiak – Center for New Dance. An empathetic and responsible relationship with the world forms the foundation of Makkonen’s artistic practice.

Marzi Nyman | Music Composition, Guitar
Marzi Nyman is a prime example of a boundary-breaking musician who has brought new vitality to Finnish rhythm music. In addition to the guitar, he also plays piano and seems to appear everywhere at once. Over the years he has played guitar in several leading jazz ensembles, worked extensively in television and film, performed as a session musician on numerous recordings, and composed works for orchestras.

Petri Sirviö | Choir Compositions, Choir Direction
Petri Sirviö works one evening a week with his shouting friends, most of his work he does alone in silence. Early in his career, he was mainly interested in musical structures – organizing spontaneous noise into complex rhythmic patterns. Later, strict conceptual themes in a relatively minimalist spirit became more compelling to him. Today, Sirviö once again enjoys building polyrhythms around interesting texts and training a new generation of shouters.

Mieskuoro Huutajat (Screaming Men's Choir)
The Oulu-based Mieskuoro Huutajat does not sing – it shouts. 20 to 40 men dressed in black walk onto the stage in disciplined formation, calmly line up in rows, and then deliver either clear-language versions of the shouting works composed by choir leader Petri Sirviö or dense sound-mass collages made from national anthems, lullabies, folk poems, or international legal texts. Huutajat has sparked confusion, laughter, admiration, and even fear by performing at major events across different art forms, in concert and opera halls, festivals, rock clubs, art galleries, as well as on streets and metro stations.

Meta4
Antti Tikkanen | violin
Minna Pensola | violin
Atte Kilpeläinen | viola
Tomas Djupsjöbacka | cello
Founded in 2001, Meta4 is one of Finland’s most successful string quartets. Its international career took off in 2004 after winning the Dmitri Shostakovich Competition. Meta4 performs actively around the world, recently appearing at venues such as Wiener Konzerthaus, London’s Wigmore Hall, Madrid’s Auditorio Nacional, Paris’s Cité de la Musique, and New York’s Lincoln Center. The quartet has also served as artistic director of the Oulunsalo Soi Chamber Music Festival (2008–2011) and as the resident quartet of the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival (2008–2017).

Oulu All Star Big Band
Oulu All Star Big Band (OASBB) consists of professional musicians from Oulu. The orchestra, which has produced more than one hundred new big band productions, has gained wide popularity as a promoter of big band music and as a boldly genre-crossing ensemble. Its musical range spans from Latin American rhythms to rock music, and from modern big band compositions to more traditional jazz. The artistic director of OASBB is trumpeter Jukka Eskola.

Jukka Eskola | Conducting, Trumpet
Jukka Eskola is one of the leading figures in Finnish jazz. In addition to his own ensembles, the actively performing trumpeter has appeared with groups such as The Five Corners Quintet and the Ricky-Tick Big Band, as well as in the orchestras of several television entertainment programmes. Eskola has played on more than 200 albums and received numerous awards. Since 2019, he has served as the artistic director of the Oulu All Star Big Band.

Heli-Maria Latola | Dancer (Ajatar)
Heli-Maria Latola, a dancer from Oulu as well as a presence artist and “slow activism” advocate, has performed as a dancer in works by JoJo – Oulu Dance Centre and Routa Company, among others, and has produced her own works. She is part of the Kainuu-based Vaara collective and has worked as an artist in communities and taught dance to people of all ages. Heli-Maria is a sensitive and courageously honest deep listener to herself, whose movement carries a kind of primitive, primal force. In art, what matters most to her is creating possibilities for encounters and space for emotions.

Maria Autio | Dancer
Maria “Mimmu” Autio is a dance artist, dance teacher, and multidisciplinary cultural professional whose work moves fluidly from stage to classroom and office work, as well as from collective processes to her own artistic projects. She has worked extensively in the field of contemporary dance, performing in works by Sari Palmgren, Tero Saarinen, Riku Lehtopolku, Petri Kekoni, and Päivi Aura in Finland and across Europe. Maria is one of the founding members of the /\/\ /\/\ /\/\ collective and has also worked as a dancer in short films and music videos.

Pinja Grönberg | Dancer
Pinja Grönberg is a Helsinki-based freelance dance artist and dance teacher who works in various roles and formations within the arts field. She has worked as a dancer in productions by Tanssiteatteri Minimi, Pori Dance Company, Keskellä Kollektiivi, and the Finnish National Opera, among others.

Mia Jaatinen | Dancer
Dance artist Mia Jaatinen is a dancer-choreographer and pedagogue working in the independent dance field. Mia works with the dance company Kinetic Orchestra and the MMM collective. She has also performed in works by Mirva Mäkinen, Iiro Näkki, Lin Dan, Johanna Nuutinen, and Sonya Lindfors, among others. Her most recent work, RIEHA, was selected for the Zodiak program in 2023. As a dance artist, Mia is interested in the work of dance performers where listening to lived bodily experiences comes together with playful engagement with the movement worlds of dance histories, multilayered expressivity, and the exploration of collective wisdom within the context of dance.

Minna Kaaronen | Dancer
Minna Kaaronen is a Master of Dance who, in addition to performing, also teaches and works with choreography, curating, and mentoring. Together with dance artists Maria Autio and Mia Jaatinen, Minna founded the /\/\ /\/\ /\/\ collective, which has created two touring stage works presented around Finland. She has created two solo works and performed in pieces by several Finnish choreographers as well as in works by MACHiNENOiSY Dance Society in Vancouver. Experiences similar to Delta Life for Minna include performing as a fire dancer in The Elements on a stage built in the Aura River in Turku, as well as dancing for Darude at a New Year’s celebration concert with choreography by Sonya Lindfors.

Viktoria Radin | Dancer
Viktoria Radin works as a performer in the field of dance. Her practice is based on movement and embodied practices. She has worked as a dancer with Kinetic Orchestra, Tanssiteatteri Hurjaruuth, and Susanna Leinonen Company, among others. In addition, she has created choreographic work, taught dance, and participated in various working groups and roles within the independent dance field.

Alina Sakko | Dancer
Alina Sakko is a dance artist who works actively both as a choreographer and a performer, mainly in Finland. As a performer, she has worked with Routa Company, MimoArt Company, Kajaani City Theatre, Taneli Törmä / Location X, and Vilma Tihilä, among others. Before her career in contemporary dance, Sakko worked for five years as a ballet dancer. Sakko’s artistic work explores the accessibility of contemporary dance on both experiential and conceptual levels. Through choreographic content and the structure of the artistic process, she seeks ways to reach a wide variety of audiences.

Lumo Company
Lumo Company is an art collective made up of professional performers that combines contemporary circus and multidisciplinary art. The group works in an international environment and creates high-quality performances for different cultural contexts. Lumo Company’s works are based on strong physical expression, artistic originality, and interdisciplinary collaboration. Delta Life features four circus artists from Lumo Company.

Justin "Nordic Thunder" Howard | Air Guitar
Justin “Nordic Thunder” Howard has devoted the last 20 years of his life to air guitar and the mission of spreading world peace. He doesn’t take his responsibilities lightly and is a true believer in the power of love, magic and the infinite barriers they are able to overcome. Justin is thrilled to be a part of the Delta Life and honored to share the message of “Make Air Not War” with the entire world from a stage on water in a city in which he loves and adores a tremendous amount.