Biography

VELI KUJALA — BIOGRAPHY

Veli Kujala (b. 1976) is a Finnish composer and classical accordionist whose work moves between contemporary concert music, improvisation and jazz. He has given more than ninety world premieres, including music by Esa-Pekka Salonen, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Kalevi Aho, Jukka Tiensuu, Lotta Wennäkoski, Nico Muhly and Kyle Gann.

His compositions span solo instruments, chamber ensembles, orchestra and electroacoustics. The Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra commissioned the violin concerto Auseil, premiered in 2019, and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra has commissioned a thirty-minute orchestral work for premiere in 2027. His accordion concerto Shape-Shifter appears on Finnish Accordion Concertos, which won the 2024 Classical Emma, Finland’s national record prize; his earlier portrait album Hyperorganism was nominated in the same category. His jazz side comes through in Thum Bop – A Hitchhiker’s Concerto for accordion and big band, premiered by the UMO Jazz Orchestra in 2017. In 2020 the Finnish Music Publishers Association named him Contemporary Composer of the Year.

His music also travels without him. Performers have taken it to the Elbphilharmonie, the Konzerthaus Berlin, the Kölner Philharmonie and the Auditorio Nacional in Madrid, and several works have entered the repertoire of soloists and ensembles on four continents.

As an accordionist, Kujala has premiered twelve concertos. Several composers have written for him over many years, among them Olli Virtaperko, Vesa Valkama and Markus Fagerudd. He has appeared as soloist with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, the Tapiola Sinfonietta, the Lapland Chamber Orchestra, Britten Sinfonia, the Gävle Symphony Orchestra and the Västerås Sinfonietta, and with ensembles including Insomnio and Ensemble Ernst, under conductors such as Susanna Mälkki, Hannu Lintu and John Storgårds. His festival appearances include the BBC Proms, Warsaw Autumn, Jazzfest Berlin and the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival. On the opera stage he has performed in Brett Dean’s Hamlet at the Metropolitan Opera, and in Mariehamn, Åland, he appeared as the Magpie in the world premiere of Karólína Eiríksdóttir’s Lisbeta. From 1997 to 2012 he was musician and arranger for children’s and youth productions at the Finnish National Opera, some six hundred performances in all. His discography runs to more than twenty-five releases.

Kujala studied at the Sibelius Academy, completing his Master of Music in 2004 and, in 2010, a Doctor of Music on new Finnish accordion music, passed with distinction. He has taught there since 2005 and has headed its classical accordion studies since 2020. He serves on the board of the Teosto Cultural Foundation and was artistic director of the New Music October festival in Oulu from 2016 to 2018. He has also worked on the instrument itself. In 2006 he and the composer Sampo Haapamäki developed the first chromatic quarter-tone accordion, built by Pigini. With support from the Wihuri Foundation, he is now developing a swell mechanism to widen the accordion’s range of colour.

Away from the concert hall, Kujala is a practising magician, a craft he has pursued since childhood and refined in masterclasses with Paul Daniels, among others. The same instincts for timing, misdirection and holding an audience run through his work on stage.