Heikki Tuuli

Laura Mikkola

Laura Mikkola, who lives in Paris, studied at the Sibelius Academy, the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia and the University of Music in Bloomington, Indiana. Her teachers have been Murray Perahia, Menahem Pressler, Gary Graffman, Dmitri Baskirov, Tapani Valsta and Ferenc Rados. By the age of 20, Mikkola had won the Maurice Ravel (France 1988), Maj Lind (Finland 1993) and Unisa Transnet (South Africa 1994) piano competitions. Mikkola also took second prize and the audience award in the prestigious Queen Elizabeth International Piano Competition in Brussels in 1995. That same year she received the Young Artist Finland Award. Mikkola regularly appears as soloist with orchestra and gives recitals on the world’s most celebrated concert platforms, collaborating with numerous top conductors. She regularly gives concerts in the Nordic countries and the rest of Europe, as well as Japan, China, the USA and North Africa. Her repertoire includes 62 piano concertos and she has recorded the complete works of Einojuhani Rautavaara for solo piano. She is also a well-known and highly respected chamber musician. Mikkola has released three discs featuring the pianist-conductor Philippe Entremont, the latest of which was recorded at the Iitti Musical Festival (in Finland) in 2008, and it came out in spring 2010. The disc received praise in the UK (Gramophone magazine), the United States and France. Another recording appeared this spring, in which Mikkola plays Erkki-Sven Tüür’s piano concerto with Paavo Järvi and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra. Laura Mikkola has been Artistic Director of the Iitti Music Festival since 2003.

Laura Mikkola

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