Theodor Lyngstad Release - March 21th 2025
Eva Ollikainen
Conductor
Eva Ollikainen was born in Espoo, Finland, near Helsinki, on February 12, 1982. As a child she studied piano, violin and french horn. Displaying a prodigious talent for music, Ollikainen enrolled at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki at 12 and began study- ing conducting.
She stayed on there through the master’s degree level studying with Jorma Panula and Leif Segerstam. Ollikainen won the Jorma Panula Conductors’ Com- petition in 2003 and rounded out her education at the Conducting Academy of the Allianz Cultural Foundation in Germany and the Tanglewood Music Center where she received instruction from Bernard Haitink and Herbert Blomstedt. She joined the Finn- ish contemporary music ensemble Uusinta as pianist, and participated in the world premieres of several works by Finnish composers. In 2005, Ollikainen made the first of several guest conducting appearances with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra addition- ally appearing as guest conductor with orchestras in various countries, including the Helsinki Philharmonic, the Vienna Symphony, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra.
In 2017 she was named chief conductor of the Nordic Symphony Orchestra, and in 2018, she led the Turku Philharmonic in a recording of Kalevi Aho’s Piano Concerto No. 1. In 2020, Ollikainen became principal conductor of the Orchestra della Toscana, and in 2021, she ascended the podium at the Iceland Symphony Orchestra as Artistic Direc- tor and Chief Conductor. Her 2023 album of works by Anna Thorvaldsdottir (Archora/ Aiŏn, released on the BIS label) earned wide critical acclaim including the New York Times’ Best Classical Music Album of 2023 and Boston Globe’s 10 Best Classical Albums of the Year.