Jukka Viitasaari

Jukka Viitasaari (b. 1961/aka "Viitasaurus") has had many decades of success as a composer for wind bands. He has been awarded seven Finnish and 16 international band composition contest prizes to date. He has performed with brass bands, wind bands, and, true to his generation, big bands and rock bands. Since 2008 he is a member of the Finnish Composers Society and a WASBE board member for 2019-2025. He also serves on the board of The Finnish Windband Association SPOL and FinnBand, Finnish Band Publishers United. Viitasaari has more than sixty works published in Finland and over twenty others in the U.S. by TRN Music Publisher, BRS-Music, Potenza Music, Leading Tones Music, and most notably Grand Mesa Music with Alfred Music.

He has presented clinics at Penfield High
School 2013 and Arizona State University in 2018 on the writing music for bands. In 2019 he co-presented with composer Jukka-Pekka Lehto ”A Shape of Finns to come” -lecture at the WASBE World Conference in Buñol, Spain in July 2019. In 2022 he presented clinics in Riga Latvia (the Finnish windband scene) and Linköping, Sweden (Nordic Composers Seminarium on writing for different band levels). Since 2003 Jukka is a regular delegate to the Midwest Clinic in Chicago.