Topi Lehtipuu

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enjoys a career as artistic curator and consultant. He was a board member of Helsinki Marketing Ltd in 2016-2018, and the CEO and artistic director of the Helsinki Festival from 2015 to 2018, a wide-ranging and innovative multi-arts festival and a major event in Finland’s cultural year. He was artistic director of Turku Music Festival from 2010 to 2015. As a festival director he has programmed the world’s leading artists from Lang Lang and David Hockney to Cate Blanchett and John Malkovich, as well as other artists, companies and orchestras representing most artistic disciplines. He commissioned a plethora of works for various media, often with a multidisciplinary ethos, including international touring successes like Thom Monckton’s “The Artist” and cross-disciplinary hit “Classical Trancelations”.

He initiated the “Science meets Arts” event Aboagora in Turku and the Finnish performing arts showcase Performing HEL, both of which have become major events in their fields. His present projects include designing a performing arts incubator in Singapore, as well as artistic lead in a transdisciplinary project in Berlin and Hong Kong in association with Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra members, Berlinale Film Festival and the New Vision Arts Festival in Hong Kong.

As a classical tenor, he has performed on major stages and festivals with, amongst others, Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras, Sir Simon Rattle and Riccardo Muti in productions directed by, amongst many others, Trisha Brown, Peter Sellars and David Hockney. He features in numerous audio and video recordings and was twice nominated for a Grammy.