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About Anu Komsi
Artist Biography
Soprano Anu Komsi is one of the most versatile singers in Finland, with a repertory stretching from the Baroque to progressive jazz. She has appeared in major houses all over Northern Europe and the U.S. Komsi was born in Kokkola, Finland, on January 9, 1967. The cellist Piia Komsi is her twin sister. Komsi studied voice and violin at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, making her vocal debut in Finland in 1993. She quickly found engagements both inside and outside Finland, appearing in numerous productions in regional German houses late in the 2000s decade. She has continued to perform opera, maintaining a longstanding association with the Hannover State Opera and commissioning a new work, Into the Little Hill, from composer George Benjamin; she recorded the work for the Nimbus label in 2008.
Komsi has also become a fixture around Europe and North America as a soloist in orchestral concerts. She has appeared with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, the Oslo Philharmonic, the Ensemble InterContemporain, the London Sinfonietta, the Czech Philharmonic, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the Vienna Symphony, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra of London, the New York Philharmonic, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, among others. In her home town she founded the West Coast Kokkola Opera company, and she has continued to play a leadership role in the organization.
Komsi's catalog of recordings has focused more closely on contemporary music, especially Finnish, than has her general record of concert performances. In 1996 she began a long series of albums on Finland's Ondine label with a recording of György Kurtág's Kafka Fragments. She has devoted several recordings to the music of Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. In 2013, with an album featuring Aarre Merikanto's Symphony No. 2 and Ekho, she moved to the Alba label, for which she participated in Reflections of a River Valley: A Portrait of the Composer Erik Fordell, in 2018. Komsi is married to conductor Sakari Oramu. ~ James Manheim
Hometown
Finland
Genre
Classical
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