Pauliina Syrjälä
Saturday 31.10. ~19.20
Pauliina Syrjälä (DMus) is a versatile Finnish folk musician, teacher and artist-researcher. She plays all types of kantele, from the five-string kantele to the 41-string instrument, with a particular focus on the 20-string Saarijärvi kantele model and its traditional stick-playing technique.
Improvisation is central to Syrjälä’s compositional process, which unfolds through experimentation and intuition in close dialogue with the instrument, with musical textures and playing techniques evolving side by side. Experimentation is an essential part of Syrjälä’s interactive relationship with the kantele. She constantly searches for new timbres and also experiences the instrument as something that offers them to her. She has collected a wide range of playing tools from hardware stores, among other places, and her toolkit has come to include paintbrushes, knitting needles, chains, and other objects whose original purpose she does not even know.
Syrjälä’s third solo album,Sydänmaat (in English the Heartlands) was released in 2026. Across the 3 solo albums, her musical expression has expanded towards increasingly layered timbres and a broader exploration of the possibilities of the kantele.
As a lecturer in folk music at the Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki, Syrjälä brings together the perspectives of performer, composer, researcher, and pedagogue in her work.
Photo: Sari Ayre
︎ https://www.pauliinasyrjala.com ︎︎︎
︎ Voices of the North – Pauliina Syrjälä with Jooseppi Pohjola’s kantele ︎︎︎
'Sydänmaat' album on Spotify ︎︎︎
All artists ︎︎︎