Before the composer Kirmo Lintinen’s (b. 1967) name was on everyone’s lips in the field of serious concert music, Lintinen had already created a career as a composer-arranger, pianist and conductor on the jazz circuit. As a contemporary music composer, he has broken ­– in a refreshing way – Finnish big band traditions and borders between music genres. The most visible side of Lintinen’s work as a musician has been his numerous performances as a soloist, band musician and conductor in Finnish jazz, symphony and chamber music line-ups.

As a teenager Lintinen studied both classical and jazz music, mainly taught by Dmitry Hinze. In 1986 he started his jazz music studies at Sibelius Academy where he graduated in 1997 majoring in composing and arraging.

Lintinen joined the UMO Helsinki Jazz Orchestra permanently in 1988 and has since worked as its pianist, conductor and artistic director; he has conducted the most orchestra concerts, tours and recordings in UMO's 48-year history. As conductor, Lintinen has led the UMO in several domestic tours as well as abroad (e.g. Stockholm, Kolbotn, Brussels, Hamburg, New York, Washington D.C., Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, Paris, London, Madrid, Dublin, Porto, Amsterdam, Utrecht, 's-Hertogenbosch, Calgary, Medicine Hat, Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver). Lintinen has collaborated with almost all Finnish orchestras.

Composing almost became Lintinen’s main occupation at the turn of the millennium. His repertoire of over a hundred compositions covers a wide selection of moods and forms from small-scale chamber music to opera, from pedagogic little songs to film scores, from dance music to dodecaphonic works, and from jazz to baroque music.

The Finnish Jazz Association's Yrjö award was presented to Lintinen in 2003. Although his jazz pianism has never really been frozen, now it's time to get going again from the composer's studio. His trio collaboration with Ville Herrala and Mika Kallio began in 2008, when Lintinen assembled a jazz band for Karita Mattila's jazz concerts. Since then, the trio has performed with several singers.

In addition to Lintinen's own compositions, the repertoire of Kirmo Lintinen's trio consists of not-so-worn-out musical and film tunes from composers that include Jerome Kern, Cy Coleman, Ray Henderson, Jule Styne, Miklós Rózsa, Friedrich Hollaender, Bernard Herrmann, John Barry. The versions of the songs trio has decided to perform are ones that suit their collective play the best, which is surely something that the audience can feel too.