Sakari Oramo

Sakari Oramo is one of Finland’s international star conductors and is known for his extended engagements with orchestras and for his sense of responsibility. During the Year of the Coronavirus, his duties with his orchestras in London and Stockholm were suspended almost completely, but his new job as Professor of Orchestral Training and Orchestra Conducting with the world-famous conducting class of the Sibelius Academy has kept him busy. Here, he is responsible not only for Finland’s reputation in orchestra conducting but also for our standard of orchestral playing, which has recently become a cause for concern.

In November 2020, the pandemic situation in Finland has remained calm enough for cultural functions to carry on.* In these exceptional times, there is an unusually great hunger for art, and socially distanced concerts provide a vital antidote to anxiety and uncertainty.

Conductor, electronic musician, singer, clarinettist and producer Taavi Oramo is known as a highly diverse and open-minded musician. Though increasingly performing as a conductor, he is keen to keep up his multiple other roles too: the various aspects of music-making that he is involved in are mutually supportive.

The Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra is now working up even more steam with a view to enhancing its international reputation.

Paavo Berglund, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Osmo Vänskä, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Sir Colin Davis, Sir Simon Rattle, and Neeme Järvi are today's great Sibelius conductors, carrying on a tradition that began with Robert Kajanus and Sir Thomas Beecham. What are their thoughts on the Finnish composer?

Sakari Oramo is Finland’s blue-eyed boy at the moment, having recently been appointed Conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. The appointment is not, however, just a boost to the ego but the just reward of true and selfless musicianship.Three cheers for another Finn who’s made a name for himself in the world!