Artistic leadership

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!"

American-Dutch soprano Katharine Dain performs opera, chamber music, orchestral repertoire, and oratorio on international stages and is a probing curator and collaborator on many kinds of creative projects. Highlights of recent seasons include a debut with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Antony Hermus in the premiere of a commissioned work by Bram Kortekaas, Mozart Don Giovanni (Donna Anna) with the Orchestra of the 18th Century and the Armel Opera Festival, orchestral song cycles of Dutilleux, Saariaho, and Berlioz with ensembles including the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Tapiola Sinfonietta, and songs of Berg and Zemlinsky arranged and conducted by Reinbert de Leeuw.

Dain’s recent album Regards sur l’Infini(external link) with pianist Sam Armstrong, featuring Messiaen Poèmes pour Mi and songs by Debussy, Delbos, Dutilleux, and Saariaho, won the 2021 Edison Klassiek for Best Debut and was widely praised in the press (“an extraordinarily polished and thought-through disc … glowing” —The Guardian).
Her performance in the the Clermont-Ferrand International Competition, called a “revelation” by Diapason, led to her debut as Konstanze in Mozart Die Entführung aus dem Serail at the opera houses of Clermont-Ferrand, Avignon, Rouen, Massy, and Reims.

A passionate advocate for music of the 20th and 21st centuries, Dain first appeared with the Dutch National Opera in Claude Vivier Kopernikus and has since revisted the opera in North and South America. In the 2021-’22 season, she will be both singer and co-creator (with conductor Manoj Kamps, director Lisenka Heijboer Castañón, and Asko|Schönberg) on a new production for the DNO’s Opera Forward Festival. She works frequently with ensembles known for experimental and multidisciplinary projects, and she is often called for jump-ins of unusual concert repertoire, which has led to invitations at the Concertgebouw’s Zaterdagmatinee Kleine Zaal recital series, the Holland Festival, and the West Cork and Aldeburgh Festivals (among others) in works by Andriessen, Gubaidulina, Korngold, Marx, Nono, Orff, Ravel, Shostakovich, Tavener, and van de Putte.

Dain is equally at home in orchestral repertoire, oratorio, chamber music, and song. Some favorite past performances include Matthäus-Passion with the Academy of Ancient Music and the Choir of King’s College Cambridge, Messiah in Carnegie Hall, Mozart Requiem with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Stravinsky Les Noces with the New York City Ballet, and Brahms Requiem with Cappella Amsterdam. A passionate promoter of chamber music and song, Dain has co-founded several ensembles, including Damask Vocal Quartet, whose 2018 album O schöne Nacht, featuring music of Brahms and his contemporaries, won France’s Choc de Classica award. She has performed with the Quiroga, Ragazze, Navarra, Van Brugh, Carducci, Callino, and Momenta string quartets and is a frequent guest on international chamber music festivals and series.

Dain holds degrees from Harvard University, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and Mannes College of Music, and she currently lives in Rotterdam.

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.

1987-1988 Jorma Panula
1987-1990 Juhani Lamminmäki
1990-1992 Osmo Vänskä
1993-2006 Jean-Jacques Kantorow
1999-2001 Tuomas Ollila

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

2019/2020 Taavi Oramo, conductor
2020/2021  Tuuli Takala, soprano
2021/2022 Sebastian Fagerlund, composer
2022/2023 Katharine Dain, soprano

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.