Cellist Senja Rummukainen has grown to be one of the brightest stars of Finnish music scene since winning the 2014 Turku Cello Competition. In 2015 she was awarded as a finalist in the Guilhermina Suggia Awards in Porto and in 2019 she was a finalist in the Pyotr Tchaikovsky International Competition in St Petersburg.
Her subsequent performances as soloist with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, Szczecin Philharmonic Orchestra, RSO and Helsinki City Orchestra have been praised by critics, colleagues and audiences. Rummukainen has performed as a soloist under the baton of Sakari Oramo, Nicholas Collon, Dima Slobodeniouk, Leif Segerstam, Jonathon Heyward and Jorman Panula, among others.
As a chamber musician, Rummukainen is part of the musical backbone of Finnish festivals such as Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival, Turku Music Festival and Oulu Music Festival. She also tours in Europe and has performed with Janine Jansen, Ilya Gringolts and August Hadelich, among others.
In the season of 2024-2025, Rummukainen will make her debut with the Cleveland Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Bogotá Symphony Orchestra. Her festival debuts include the prestigious BBC Proms Festival, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Sakari Oramo, and at the Salzburg Easter Festival, where she shall interpret the cello concerto of Esa-Pekka Salonen with the composer and the Radio Symphony Orchestra.
Rummukainen's teachers include Taru Aarnio, Allar Kaasik, Marko Ylönen of the Sibelius Academy, Truls Mørk of the Norwegian Academy of Music, Young-Chang Cho of the Folkwang University in Essen and Jens Peter Maintz of the Berlin Music University. Each of them has made a significant contribution to her art of playing the cello.
Rummukainen strives to achieve the evocative and melodious sound of cello, which she herself fell in love with, when she first heard it at the age of 6 at the East Helsinki Music Institute (IHMO). Because the sound of cello is the closest to human voice of all the intruments, it can be used to express emotions and evoke them in others even more accurately than words.
Rummukainen is currently playing a David Tecchler cello from 1707, which is owned by the Finnish Cultural Foundation.
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