HELSINKI SERIÖS is a concert series with a simple principle: once a month, we offer high-quality chamber music in the traditional Sibelius Academy concert hall. The setting is obliging, as this hall has been the venue for the city’s most important chamber music moments since 1930. We believe that the orchestral-oriented music scene in Helsinki deserves an international series for smaller ensembles.
Our goal is to provide as broad a picture of chamber music as possible. In addition to traditional string quartets, wind ensembles, instrumental duos, and piano trios, we also want to include piano recitals, lied concerts, baroque ensembles, and contemporary music in each season. We take special care to ensure that international Finnish musicians are well represented in the program.
The artistic committee consists of Atte Kilpeläinen, Jukka Untamala, and Keval Shah. Hannele Eklund and Minna Lindgren are responsible for production. The project was launched with the support of the Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation, and we have also received support from the Finnish Cultural Foundation and TAIKE (Arts Promotion Centre Finland). Some of the concerts in the series will be broadcast on Yle Radio 1, and many of our performers give master classes to students at the Sibelius Academy. We also collaborate with producers outside Helsinki, such as the Hauho Music Festival and the Sibelius Museum in Turku, whose concert series feature some of the artists from Helsinki Seriös.
The name of the series was conceived on a summer terrace, when we were considering different options based on the premise that the name had to include the series’ home city and the letter “ö.” The logo and visual design of the series were created by Anne Kaikkonen.
Hannele Eklund, Executive Director
With her long experience of supervision and management acquired over many years spent in the service of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Avanti! Chamber Orchestra and the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, Hannele Eklund is an expert on public relations, communications, management and events projects in the performing arts. She has been responsible for a number of assignments in the independent performing arts sector and is a member of many boards and committees. Managing Director of WellSpoken Oy, the company founded by her in 2016, she holds a Master’s degree in organisational communication and public relations, is a qualified secretary and has completed a vocational diploma in corporate management.
Atte Kilpeläinen, viola, Member of the Artistic Curator Team
Atte Kilpeläinen began his studies at the West Uusimaa Music Institute and proceeded to degrees from the Cologne University of Music and the Sibelius Academy. He has held the position of principal viola in the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra since 2005, while also guesting as section leader in the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the Leipzig Gewandhaus and other orchestras. Atte has been a member of the Meta4 string quartet since 2006, and in 2009, he and a group of friends founded the multidisciplinary art association Hämmentämö that has arranged popular concerts in the Vihti region near Helsinki. Since 2008, he has been responsible for the closing concert, held on an island off the town of Kotka, of the Lohisoitto Music Festival. Atte Kilpeläinen has been teaching at the Sibelius Academy since 2012.
Jukka Untamala, violin, Member of the Board & Artistic Curator team
Jukka Untamala is one of the most interesting multiple talents on the contemporary Finnish music scene: conductor, chamber musician, violinist, and innovative mastermind of concert series and festivals. He is one of the original members of the Kamus Quartet and, together with the other players, Artistic Director of Our Festival. As of 2020, he has also been Artistic Director of the Lohja City Orchestra. He has also been artistic planner of the KUULKAA! (LISTEN!) project aiming to improve the accessibility of classical music, and has curated Our Festival’s concert series Breaking the Silence. Jukka Untamala studied the violin at the Sibelius Academy, chamber music at the European Chamber Music Academy and orchestral conducting at the Panula Academy.
Keval Shah, piano, Member of the Artistic Curator team
British-Indian pianist Keval Shah is one of the leading figures in a new generation of collaborative pianists. Since 2020, he has been Lecturer of Lied at the Sibelius Academy, Helsinki. He has also been invited to teach at the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music, London, the Royal Danish Academy of Music, the Norwegian Academy of Music, and the Academy of Music and Opera at Mälardalen University. Outside the concert venues he is also a regular presenter for BBC Radio, recently hosting a series of programmes on song and chamber music. Keval Shah graduated from Cambridge University and the Royal Academy of Music with distinction, and was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music (ARAM) in 2022, in recognition of outstanding contribution to the music profession.
Minna Lindgren, writer, journalist, Chair of the Board
Minna Lindgren has been making programmes for all the radio and TV channels of the Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yle) since 1986 and has written articles for numerous Finnish magazines and newspapers. Nowadays a mere spectator, she has also contributed to a Radio Finland sports programme. Her nine novels have been translated into more than 15 languages, and she has written five non-fiction works; the most recent, about opera, was published in spring 2022. Versions of some of her novels have been adapted for the theatre, and she has written two plays – an update of Mozart’s Così fan tutte under the title of Covid fan tutte, and the librettos for several operas, most recently Die Zaubermelodika composed by Iiro Rantala and commissioned by the Komische Oper, Berlin. Minna Lindgren has been a member of the Social Services and Health Care Committee of the Helsinki City Council since autumn 2021.