Welcome

I’m a musician. Sometimes a leader, sometimes a follower – but always wholeheartedly present.

I am currently engaged in finding a way to telling the difference between different kinds of positive and negative moments in musical time and life. What is a musically load-bearing structure and what is just ornamentation around that. I am also most curious about whether is really makes a difference on which instrument one chooses to express one's musical desires. Also, I cautiously oppose the concept of crossing borders and breaking barriers. Sometimes mixing genres needs not be mandatory and sometimes serious and detailed concentration on things per se is good.

My main instrument is the harpsichord, though I’m no stranger to other tools and roles in music-making. My roots run deep. I believe that in all music – regardless of style – there is a sense, a sound, and a presence of deep humanity, a transcendence beyond the earthly, and even a glimpse of the ancient. I often see the new through the lens of the old.

My musical mother tongue lies in Renaissance polyphony, simple song, counterpoint, and Baroque harmony. Through them, I explore many fields with many different rules. They offer both the ordinary and the extraordinary, the structured and the chaotic, the ugly and the beautiful, the stable and the unstable – like the pillars of a temple and the vine that coils around them. And still, none of this excludes the modern listener. On the contrary: music invites us all to feel something personal, shared, and timeless.

To me, music is nature. Within it you can sense and hear the flow of water, the paths of celestial bodies, rays of light, hopeless darkness, cutting cold wind, the glow of warmth, swaying pendulums, a javelin in flight, tentative and confident footsteps, the wings of an eagle and a butterfly, the roar of the ocean and the rumble of thunder, the beating heart and the breath of someone asleep.

I never wish to make – or hear – a sound that feels indifferent. In music, there is the potential for true presence: person to person, like in conversation. But music also holds the mysterious, the unspoken, the universal – a shared message that reaches out to the individual listener, the performer, the creator.

I find context deeply inspiring. Music and the ceremonies around it have their own time and place. Sometimes the most radical act is not to break the rules, not to leave the trench, not to tear down the fences. Real thinking outside the box sometimes means building the box – or appreciating the boxes we already have and finding joy in them.

A list of my upcoming concert activities is available here.
More about me can be read below and pictures can be found here.
To contact me, please find the link buttons below the text.

Matias Häkkinen (b.1981) is one of the most active, dedicated and interesting musicians in his native Finland. He has a wide repertoire that ranges from renaissance to most recent contemporary music with a special interest in late 17th century music. He is a versatile musician who has given solo recitals, as well as worked as a conductor, lied-pianist, organist, chamber musician and accompanist with several singers, instrumentalists, and as a member of different ensembles and orchestras all around Europe and in North America. He is also working as a writer, lecturer and expert of early music matters and keyboard instruments as a freelancer in different organisations.

Häkkinen is the artistic director of the orchestra Ensemble Nylandia, BarokkiKuopio festival and Café Barock concert series and president of the Finnish Early Music Society. In 2009-10 he was a member of the European Union Baroque Orchestra and in 2010 he toured with the European Union Chamber Orchestra. He has worked with the Finnish National Opera, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Avanti! Chamber Orchestra, the Guard's Band, Finnish Baroque Orchestra, Opus X and numerous other orchestras and ensembles. He also has worked as a teacher of the harpsichord, piano, basso continuo, chamber music and accompaniment in Helsinki Conservatory, Metropolia University and the Sibelius Academy. His activities include also different management and production engagements.

Matias Häkkinen graduated from Sibelius Academy in Helsinki with excellent grades having studied with professors Anssi Mattila and Annamari Pölhö. He has also studied at Amsterdam Conservatory with prof. Menno van Delft and in Escola Superior da Música e das Artes de Espectáculo, in Porto, Portugal with prof. Ana Mafalda Castro. He also holds a bachelor degree in the piano and has attended numerous masterclasses with some of the most prestigious professors in the early music world. His work has been supported by grants from several funds and foundations (Finnish state/Ministry of education), Pro Musica, The Finnish Cultural Foundation, Alfred Kordelin, MES).

Most notable projects and performances as a conductor during the most recent times have included Händel Acis & Galatea in Vancouver, Stradella St. John the Baptist Oratorio and Purcell Dido & Aeneas in Helsinki and Tampere Philharmony concert with music from Muffat to Pärt with great acclaim in Tampere. As soloist and chamber musician the most recent highlights are a solo recital in BRQ Vantaa festival (including Froberger and world premiere of Nuorvala Enharmonic Suite for hyperchromatic harpsichord), duo concerts of early Italian baroque together with Finnish folk music with Kreeta-Maria Kentala in Finland, Belgium and Poland as well as Tölöläb Early Music collective making electroacustic improvisation based on medieval and renaissance music and visual artist Jani Ruscica Flatlands project of improvisation concerts on ficticious instruments.

As of 2020 his main focus are leading and conducting concerts with both period and modern orchestras and preparing for first two concerts of his artistic doctor’s degree on artistic applications of new tuning philosophical thinking in Sibelius Academy Docmus department.