Tuomas Hannikainen - Conductor
Tuomas Hannikainen, formerly Tuomas Ollila then Ollila-Hannikainen, has
been amongst the brightest in the extraordinary wave of younger Finnish
conductors since being appointed Chief Conductor and Music Director of the
Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra in 1994. He has recently had his contract
as joint Chief Conductor of the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra extended
and has previously held positions as Joint Principal Conductor of the Tapiola
Sinfonietta in Finland, as Principal Guest Conductor of the West Australian
Symphony Orchestra and as Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of Finland's
period instrument group, The Sixth Floor Orchestra. Today he regularly conducts
many of the most prestigious orchestras throughout the Nordic countries.
Elsewhere his work takes him through Europe, Australasia, N. America and
the Far East with orchestras like the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Netherlands
Radio Philharmonic, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, National Orchestra of Spain,
BBC Scottish Symphony, Ulster Orchestra, Sydney Symphony, Melbourne Symphony,
New Zealand Symphony, Calgary Philharmonic, Singapore Symphony and Malaysian
Philharmonic amongst many others. His formidable talent is also reflected
in the several CD recordings he has made, most of them for the Ondine label.
Tuomas Hannikainen was born in 1965 and is the grandson of the famous conductor
Tauno Hannikainen. He began his musical education at the Porvoo Music Institute
before attending the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. He continued his violin
studies in France before taking his diploma at the Sibelius Academy in 1988.
He began his conducting studies in 1985 in the famous class of Professor
Jorma Panula, who also taught Esa-Pekka Salonen and Jukka-Pekka Saraste,
at the Sibelius Academy, graduating with Distinction in 1991. In 1993, after
completing his postgraduate studies in St Petersburg with Ilya Musin, he
attended Tanglewood in the USA where he studied with Seiji Ozawa, Sir Simon
Rattle and Sir Roger Norrington.