Heta Aho (b. 1992) is a Helsinki-based composer and director who works at the intersection of music and storytelling. Aho’s music is colored by powerful yet shifting emotions: passion can turn into embarrassment, and play into love, faster than a musician can turn a page.

Aho has previously composed, among others, the monologue opera Kerran (2024), written by Juha Itkonen, in which a woman runs into her ex at a hardware store, as well as the chamber opera Tove J (2022), with a libretto by Mirva Koivukangas, about Tove Jansson.

A micro-opera can also be created with a single instrument: in Tyhmä juttu (2021) for solo clarinet, two aunts converse in the lunch-salad queue at Svenskan. It is summer, hot, noisy. One of the aunts is troubled by some “stupid thing.”