Laura Mikkola

The Finnish pianist Laura Mikkola was born in 1974. She has won prizes at several well-known international competitions: Queen Elisabeth Competition in Belgium (1995), 1996 Unisa Transnet International Music Competition, International Maj Lind Piano Competition in Helsinki, and International Piano Competition Maurice Ravel in Saint-Jean-de-Luz.

She studied at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia as well as at Bloomington University, both in the USA. Her teachers and mentors include Murray Perahia, Menahem Pressler, Gary Graffman, Dimitri Bashkirov, Tapani Valsta and Ferenc Rados.

She has performed as soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Münchner Philharmoniker, the Nagoya Philharmonic Orchestra amongst others; she has worked with the conductors Esa-Pekka Salonen, Leif Segerstam, Valery Gergiev, Mikko Franck and Hannu Lintu, and has performed in Munich (Herkulessaal), Tokyo (Suntory Hall), Los Angeles (Hollywood Bowl), New York (Carnegie Hall), and Zurich (Tonhalle).

In the realm of contemporary music, she has recorded the Piano Concerto of the Estonian composer Erkki-Sven Tüür with Paavo Järvi and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony. She also recorded Légendes, the first monographic CD of David Chaillou. Laura Mikkola is artistic director of the Iitti Music Festival in Finland.

Picture: Liisa Valonen