Concerts » Ville Urponen

Date

16.07.24

Day

Tuesday

Time

20:00

Doctor of Music Ville Urponen is one of the best known Finnish organists. He graduated from the soloist programme at Sibelius Academy with a diploma in both organ and piano. He studied organ with Professor Kari Jussila and piano with Meri Louhos. In the 1994-1995 academic year, Urponen took advanced organ studies at the Sweelinck Conservatorium under Professor Jacques van Oortmerssen. In addition, Urponen has taken several organ master classes. He received his Master of Music degree from the Sibelius Academy soloist department in 1996 and completed the Doctor of Music in the Sibelius Academy’s Doctoral Programme in Arts in 2009.

Urponen has performed in a number of European countries as well as in Japan, South Korea and Russia. He has given performances at several major music festivals in Finland and abroad. Urponen has played as a soloist in a number of orchestras in Finland and abroad (among others Moscow Chamber Orchestra), and he is also a renowned accompanist who works regularly with prominent Finnish vocalists, instrumentalists and choirs.

Urponen has recorded a number of solo albums which has been critically acclaimed internationally. In addition to solo recordings, he has contributed to many albums as an accompanist and orchestral musician.

Urponen records regularly for the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE), and he has performed on television and radio in several countries. In recent years, Urponen has researched and played a lot of “forgotten” Finnish organ music. Urponen also actively performs contemporary music, having premiered over thirty new works and given Finnish premieres of a number of contemporary works.

Baroque organ music and especially Johann Sebastian Bach´s organ music is in the heart of Urponen´s repertoire and in summer 2012 Urponen played all the Bach´s organ works in Helsinki.

In addition to his career as a performer, Urponen is a prolific researcher and writer. His book “The Unrelenting Power of Exuberant Youth. Finnish Organ Music Until World War II” was published in 2011 and has been a best seller among Finnish music books. He has written articles for many different publications, been a guest on several talk programmes on YLE and edited a three-part series on Finnish organ music for radio.

Ville Urponen works as a teacher of organ music at Sibelius Academy. He is the artistic director of the Turku Organ Festival, and served from 2003-2009 as the chairman of Organum, the oldest organ music society in the Nordic countries.