Artistic leadership
The Tapiola Sinfonietta engages in close collaboration with its Artists in Association and with an annually appointed Artist in Residence. The orchestra has been appointing Artists in Association since 2006. In the 2023-2024 season, conductor Ryan Bancroft and guitarist-composer and guitarist-composer Marzi Nyman are the Artists in Association. The Artist in Residence is author Juha Itkonen.
Principal artistic responsibility in the Tapiola Sinfonietta rests not with a chief conductor but with the Artistic Board, which is in charge of repertoire planning and artistic improvement. The Artistic Board also selects the guest conductors and soloists. This administrative model is used by a handful of chamber orchestras around the world but remains a rarity. The Tapiola Sinfonietta adopted this model in 2001. The Board picks out concert programs, guest conductors and guest soloists and puts them into a proposal submitted to the Repertoire Committee.
The Artistic Board consists of the General Manager Maati Rehor and two musicians elected by orchestra members. In the 2022-2023 season, they are I Concertmaster Janne Nisonen and Principal Flute Hanna Juutilainen.
Conductor Ryan Bancroft has been Artist-in-Association with the Tapiola Sinfonietta since autumn 2021.
Bancroft has been on a steadily rising career trajectory in recent years. He attained international recognition when he won 1st prize and the audience prize at the Malko Competition for young conductors in 2018.
In autumn 2020, he took up the post of Principal Conductor of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. In November 2021, he was awarded Conductor of the Year by the Royal Philharmonic Society, and in December 2021 he was appointed Chief Conductor of the Stockholm Royal Philharmonic as of the 2023–2024 season.
“It’s an honour to be appointed [Artist in Association] of Tapiola Sinfonietta. During these increasingly difficult times, we look firmly to the arts for joy and consolation; it is heartening that we also look enthusiastically towards the future. In collaborating with this orchestra, I’ve discovered a rare and deeply moving approach to music making: the eagerness to reimagine the concert experience, the dedication to chamber ideals, and the remarkable ‘We are in this together’ outlook. For these reasons, I’m sincerely grateful to the extraordinary artists, staff, and audience for their warm welcome.”
Ryan Bancroft first performed with the Tapiola Sinfonietta in 2019, and a warm connection was immediately established between him, the musicians and the administration. He has also been a guest conductor during the 2020/2021 season. The orchestra is enthusiastic about working with Bancroft, whose broad range as a musician in terms of styles and interpretations, besides playing multiple instruments himself, has impressed audiences and critics alike.
Marzi Nyman is a Finnish guitarist, composer and singer. He does not, perhaps, represent the conventional image of an Artist in Association to a classical chamber orchestra. But his mastery as a guitarist, singer, composer and arranger, and his light-music networks have been put to good use in producing concerts, especially those for the young.
Nyman’s role as Artist in Association with the Tapiola Sinfonietta includes appearing as soloist in his own Concerto for electric guitar and in a concert of music by Frank Zappa. In October 2020 Tapiola Sinfonietta premiered Nyman's new work for the orchestra titled “Lost Key”, a music performance for children.
“I feel deeply passionate about chamber and orchestral music,” he says. “When the Sinfonietta players invited me to be their partner, I had to pinch myself. My feelings had been reciprocated! The partnership is absolutely one of the biggest honours I have received. The contact with the players is extremely important to me, and I dream of even closer dialogue with them. I also hope that we may, at our concerts, hear a real “band” of which I am privileged to be a member. My feeling is this: ‘The playground is open: Come on in!"
The Tapiola Sinfonietta has invited author Juha Itkonen to be Artist-in-Residence for the 2023–2024 season. The orchestra first collaborated with Itkonen in the concert series ‘Chamber music in chapels’ in spring 2022, and Itkonen also contributed a talk to the ‘Politics’ festival in spring 2023.
Itkonen is currently the chair of the Central Arts Council. As Artist-in-Residence, he will be publishing a series of writings, including one-sided correspondence with great composers of the past.
In April 2024, he will join guitarist and composer Marzi Nyman, Artist-in-Association with the Tapiola Sinfonietta, in hosting the new ‘Kupla’ [Bubble] club, combining music and spoken word. “Music is a great love of mine, and exploring further collaboration with the Tapiola Sinfonietta is a hugely inspiring prospect. I am not completely unfamiliar with the world of classical music, as my musical journey began with piano studies at the Hämeenlinna Music Institute at the age of 12. Bringing words and music together opens up a vast domain of possibilities,” says Juha Itkonen. He will also contribute to the creation of a new work by composer Heta Aho, to be premiered by the Tapiola Sinfonietta at a concert at the ‘Youth’ festival on 11 April 2024.
Author Juha Itkonen (b. 1975) grew up in Hämeenlinna and now lives in Helsinki with his wife and four children. He has published nine novels and other literary works. His début novel Myöhempien aikojen pyhiä [Latter-day saints] (2003) is set in a Mormon community and deals with faith, guilt and alienation. The novel was nominated for the Finlandia Prize and was awarded the Kalevi Jäntti Prize.
His second novel, Anna minun rakastaa enemmän [Let me love more] (2005), is set on the international rock scene in New York and in a Finnish city where ice hockey is the big thing. For this novel, Itkonen was awarded the State Prize in Literature in 2006.
From 1997 to 2000, Itkonen was a contributor to Katso and Rumba magazines, and from 2000 to 2006 he was employed at Apu magazine variously as sub-editor, managing editor and journalist. He has been a freelance writer since 2006. In 2013, he was awarded the Veijo Meri Prize of the Otava Book Foundation.
French conductor and violinist Jean-Jacques Kantorow was given the title of Honorary Conductor of the Tapiola Sinfonietta in 2011. He was the orchestra’s Artistic Director from 1993 to 1999 and its regular conductor from 2000 to 2006.
His tenure was of crucial importance to the shaping of the sound of the Tapiola Sinfonietta. He also conducted the orchestra in a substantial number of recordings: of the 60 items in the discography, about one third were conducted by Kantorow.
About one third of the more than 70 albums in the discography of the Tapiola Sinfonietta were recorded under Jean-Jacques Kantorow. The most recent of these, a recording of Piano Concertos nos. 3 to 5 by Saint-Saëns with Alexandre Kantorow as soloist, has received several international prizes and accolades.
Apart from his conducting career, Kantorow is also a successful concert violinist and has won prizes in several international competitions.
The Tapiola Sinfonietta engages in close collaboration with its Artists in Association and with an annually appointed Artist in Residence.
The orchestra has been appointing Artists in Association since 2006.
Chief conductors and artistic partners of Tapiola Sinfonietta are listed below.
Chief conductors 1987-2001
1987-1988 Jorma Panula
1987-1990 Juhani Lamminmäki
1990-1992 Osmo Vänskä
1993-2006 Jean-Jacques Kantorow
1999-2001 Tuomas Ollila
Artistic partners 2001-2023
2001-2002 John Storgårds
2003-2009 Olli Mustonen
2006-2013 Pekka Kuusisto
2006-2012 Stefan Asbury
2010-2019 Mario Venzago
2011-2014 Santtu-Matias Rouvali
2013- Marzi Nyman
2014-2019 Alexander Melnikov
2018-2021 Klaus Mäkelä
2021- Ryan Bancroft
Artists in Residence
2019/2020 Taavi Oramo, conductor
2020/2021 Tuuli Takala, soprano
2021/2022 Sebastian Fagerlund, composer
2022/2023 Katharine Dain, soprano
2023/2024 Juha Itkonen, author
Because the Tapiola Sinfonietta is relatively small, with 44 members, and because many of its members have known each other for a long time, the ensemble often performs without a conductor.
Performed with the leader taking leadership responsibility within the ranks, as it were, such concerts highlight the personal skills of each musician and the essential chamber music nature of musical performance. Not all works can be performed without a conductor, however, so each such program is carefully considered with regard to rhythm, texture and orchestration.
The Tapiola Sinfonietta has developed conductor-less performing into an important format alongside other types of performance.