Biography Jonte Knif (1975)

Multi-instrumentalist, music technologian, instrument maker and loudspeaker & amplifier designer. Composer.

The versatile Jonte Knif quit his clarinet studies in 1993, at the age of 18. His piano lessons were unfinished a year after. His growing interest in early music made it possible for him to interrupt a remarkable amount of instrument studies, of which the most notable was his decision to quit playing the harpsichord in 2000, which he had studied at the soloist department of The Sibelius-Academy, with Elina Mustonen as his teacher. Giving up his main instrument was accompanied later that year by terminating the studies in composition, as well. Appropriately, Knif studies neither the crumhorn, the recorder, the organ, the virginal nor the oboe da caccia and longer. Most recently he quit studying the shawm, in 2002. To make full judgememt to Jonte Knif's achievements in the field of incompleting studies, it deserves to be pointed out that he has also abandoned his studies at The Helsinki University of Technology. In the future Knif will be able to discontinue his studies at The Department of Music Technology in The Sibelius Academy , as well as drop out playing the hammered dulcimer, which he currently explores.

Note from the webmaster!

Against all odds, Jonte Knif finally gave up his quest for unfinished studies and actually did gratuate from Sibelius-Academy’s department of Music Technology in Spring 2005. His excellent Master’s Thesis was titled Case Study: The Electro-Acoustic Clavichord and it received the highest possible academic grade, Laudatur.