Conductor
Erkki Lasonpalo is the chief conductor and artistic director of the Saimaa Sinfonietta, the St. Michel Strings and the Lappeenranta City Orchestra, and the artistic director of the Heinävesi Music Festival.
A decade after he was invited to study with the Finnish conducting guru Jorma Panula, Erkki Lasonpalo is making a name for himself as a conductor who combines fluent technique with natural communicative spirit. After tutoring from Panula, Erkki continued his studies at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki with Leif Segerstam, where he was awarded a Wegelius Foundation grant and graduated with the highest honors.
One of the leading Finnish conductors of his generation Erkki Lasonpalo has conducted most of the major orchestras in Finland including the Helsinki Philharmonic, Finnish Radio Symphony, Tampere and Turku Philharmonic Orchestras and the Lahti, Oulu and Kuopio Symphony Orchestras. He has been also engaged by the City Orchestras of Lappeenranta, Vaasa, Pori, Jyväskylä and Joensuu as well as the Tapiola Sinfonietta and the Lapland Chamber Orchestra. Erkki has augmented his growing experience in opera by working with the orchestra of the Finnish National Opera and Ballet, where he is re-invited next season, and with the Oulu Opera, Savonlinna Opera Festival and Sakari Oramo’s West Coast Kokkola Opera Company. Internationally he has given acclaimed performances with the Gothenburg Symphony, Iceland Symphony, Sinfonietta Cracovia, ADDA Sinfónica (Alicante) among many others.
Future engagements will bring Erkki Lasonpalo to the Orquesta Filarmónica de Málaga, Orquesta Filarmónica de Bógota, Oulu Sinfonia, Finnish National Opera and Ballet, Orquesta Reino de Aragón, etc.
Erkki is currently Artistic Director of the Heinävesi Music Festival, a post he has held since 2014. Since 2016 he has been Artistic Director of the Kemi City Orchestra and since 2017 he has held the position of Artistic Partner of the Mikkeli & Lappeenranta City Orchestras. He is also the Artistic Director of the Helsinki Sinfonietta.
Like many of the most distinguished Finnish conductors working globally, Erkki laid the foundations of his musicianship as a professional instrumentalist. He studied violin at the Sibelius Academy and remains a member of the prize-winning Postiglione String Quartet.
