Kaija Saariaho was born in Helsinki in 1952 and started receiving piano and organ lessons at an early age. She was equally interested in the visual arts, however, and after taking her high-school diploma she began a combined study of painting and musicology. From 1976 to 1980 she took a degree in composition at the Sibelius Academy, studying with Paavo Heininen. In 1980 she met Brian Ferneyhough, after which she resumed her studies with him and Klaus Huber at Freiburg Musikhochschule. In 1982 she attended her first courses at IRCAM in Paris. Since then she has regularly worked with electronic resources. A key feature of her music is its synaesthetic approach: her works often proceed from literary texts or natural and scientific phenomena. Her international breakthrough came with Verblendungen for orchestra and pre-recorded tape (1982-4), inspired by Canetti's novel Die Blendung, and Lichtbogen for chamber ensemble and live electronics (1985-6). She also wrote a violin concerto Graal Théâtre for Gidon Kremer (1995), the song cycle Château de l'Âme for Dawn Upshaw (1996), and a choral-orchestral work Oltra mar for the New York Philharmonic (1999). Her first opera, L'Amour de loin, was mounted at the Salzburg Festival in 2000. It was followed by two further stage works in 2006: Adriana mater at the Opéra de Paris and La Passion de Simone in Vienna. Her most recent world premières took place in 2007, when the cello concerto Notes on Light was performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the string quartet Terra Memoria was created by the Emerson Quartet. Among the many awards and distinctions she has received are the Kranichstein Music Prize (1986), the Prix Italia (1988), the Ars Electronic Prize (1989), the Nordic Music Prize (2000), the Grawemeyer Award (2003), and the Heidelberg Prize for Women Artists (2009). Since 1982 she has lived in Paris.