News
20 years of singing together as an independent professional choir!
We launched the Helsinki Chamber Choir’s 20th anniversary celebrations in spring 2025 with six concerts at the Helsinki Music Centre and tours to the Netherlands and Germany. The festivities continue this summer and autumn with a wide range of programmes showcasing the multifaceted talents of our group.
The autumn season of the Helsinki Chamber Choir offers a variety of things to hear: there will be a concert of music by Kaija Saariaho and Helena Tulve, a joint concert with the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and concerts with three very different orchestras (Sibelius Academy Symphony Orchestra & Royal College of Music Symphony Orchestra, Sointi Jazz Orchestra and Finnish Baroque Orchestra). .
Choral Postcards, developed by Chamber Choir Ireland, is an opportunity for young composers to learn about choral composition from top professionals and to hear their music performed by singers from a professional choir. During the project, participants compose “choral postcards” - short choral pieces for a four-part mixed choir that fit on a postcard - and Helsinki Chamber Choir creates video recordings of the pieces.
Helsinki Chamber Choir is seeking singers to join our roster for all sections. Candidates are expected to have professional training in vocal music, as well as experience with performing contemporary music and in choral/ensemble signing. Singers are booked on a project-by-project basis.
Time: 23rd of April 2024 2.50pm-6pm
Place: Helsinki (exact location to be confirmed later)
The Helsinki Chamber Choir’s Autumn Season 2022 is now published, click here for the full list of concerts!
Candidates are expected to have professional training in vocal music, as well as experience with performing contemporary music and in choral/ensemble signing. The choir operates on a project-by-project basis.
Time: Wednesday 10th of March 2022 5pm-7.30pm
Place: Helsinki (exact location to be confirmed later)
Time: Thursday 19 March 2021 at 15.00–19.00
Place: In Helsinki (we will announce the exact location later)
There are three assignments in the audition:
-solo singing (there will be a pianist, bring sheet music in the right key for him/her)
-singing in a quartet, we will send the music a week before the audition
-"prima vista" assignment, we will send the music 24 hours before the audition
In January BIS Records published our latest record, with music by Alex Freeman.
An die Freude! 18.12. at 7 pm.
Despite the circumstances we get to celebrate Beethoven 250 years by performing his ninth symphony together with the Helsinki Philharmonic and chief conductor Susanna Mälkki. The concert is broadcasted directly on the Helsinki channel and in the HKO Screen mobile app.
More information.
At the Musica nova Helsinki festival in February Helsinki Chamber Choir will perform the young star composer Eugene Birman’s socially aware and emotionally charged work State of the Union, a meditative stream of names of extinct animals, TV ad slogans, US military operations and refrains of the Christian right. The Helsinki Chamber Choir is known especially for performing contemporary music, and it has worked with Birman for years and premiered the piece on its US tour in 2016.
Friday 20.11. Helsinki Chamber Choir performs at the Fredrik Pacius Symposium, where the first editions of Finnish Musical Heritage Society are released, and Fredrik Pacius and his followers’ work presented. The Fredrik Pacius Award 2020 will also be presented at the event.
Live streaming at sls.fi.
Record release 16.11.!
The new Alba Records recording presents vocal works by two of the leading Finnish modernists born in the 1970s: Maailmamaa by Sampo Haapamäki, who recently won the Nordic Council Music Prize, as well as on, -ne, -ni and Obviously Foreign Infantry by Antti Auvinen.
In October we finally get to perform Arvo Pärt's Passio for live audiences! Welcome to join us in Jyväskylä, Järvenpää or Tampere:
Mon 19.10. Arvo Pärt: Passio, Taulumäen kirkko, Jyväskylä
https://facebook.com/events/s/arvo-part-passio/653838995519875/?ti=icl
28.9. we performed new compositions and lyrics by students from the University of Arts Helsinki in the Klang concert series. There were very few seats available in the Camerata hall in Musiikkitalo, but the concert was broadcasted by UniArts TV, so you can see and hear it via this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Yv3k5_vmFE&t=175s
Thanks to all who watched and listened to our version of Pärt: Passio! The program is available world-wide via Yle Areena until 31.12.2020: https://areena.yle.fi/1-50558417
Next up is a real live concert: Monday 7th of September we sing Marian songs from different historical periods, conducted by Nils Schweckendiek. More information here.
Happy News! Passio by Arvo Pärt is streamed live from Helsinki Friday 21st of August!
Helsinki Festival cannot be organised this summer, but a new multi-artistic event in August will bring art to the courtyards and streets as well as the internet, radio and television. Helsinki Fest will be celebrated on 21–23 August, with three concert specials streamed on YLE channels.
The performances of the opera Autuus (by Antti Auvinen, Harry Salmenniemi and Teemu Mäki) at the Finnish National Opera in September 2020 are postponed due to the epidemic situation. The new performance dates will be published later on.
More information: https://oopperabaletti.fi/ohjelmisto-ja-liput/autuus/
Our record Reports with choral music by Perttu Haapanen has been chosen Record of the Year 2019 by the Finnish Choral Conductors Association.
More information (in Finnish): http://kuoronjohtajat.fi/vuoden-2019-kuorolevy-on-helsingi%E2%80%A6/
On 30th of August two world premieres are planned at Ruhrtriennale festival in Essen, Germany, together with Uusinta Ensemble. The concert is conducted by Nils Schweckendiek and includes pflaumenblüten by Austrian composer Klaus Lang and INNEN / SISÄLLÄ, a composition by Slovenian Vito Žuraj with text by Tyrolean author Händl Klaus.