Tiina Tunturi, M.Mus. is to retire following a distinguished 23-year career as Managing Director of Naantali Music Festival, and the Music Festival Foundation board has appointed Suvi Innilä, MA as the new Managing Director, effective as of 1 November 2020. Tiina Tunturi will continue working through November in a consultant capacity.
“Naantali Music Festival is one of Finland’s longest-running and most highly esteemed music festivals. It is a joy and an honour to be able to help advance this great narrative into future years. Our long-term Executive Director Tiina Tunturi has set a splendid example that is inspiring to continue, and it is with the greatest respect that I look forward to working with our founder and Artistic Director Arto Noras, and to strengthening co-operation with current and new partners.”
After serving in such capacities as Programme Director of the 2011 European Capital of Culture year in Turku and Programme Manager for the centenary of Finnish independence at the Office of the Prime Minister, this appointment brings Suvi Innilä back to her roots in many ways.
“While it has been agreeable to work more broadly throughout the field of culture, classical music remains the milieu of my formative years and a hobby that I long pursued, even with professional ambitions. It is also a return to my roots in recalling that I first attended music camps arranged in association with Naantali Music Festival as a junior violinist at the tender age of ten years, so our relationship is already a long one. I am similarly happy to be able to work in and on behalf of my current home town of Naantali,” Suvi Innilä says.
“The positive personality of Tiina Tunturi has been a major factor in making Naantali Music Festival well known, even beyond the borders of Finland, as a warm-hearted event to which both audiences and artists have always been pleased to return. I promise to do everything in my power to ensure that Naantali Music Festival continues to be known for its sunny ambience as well as its high standard programme and leading performers: as an event that warmly welcomes everyone,” Innilä says.
Despite particularly hard times for the event and culture sector due to coronavirus, Suvi Innilä is confident for the future and believes that the importance of live music and the need to experience it have only grown in recent months: “It has become especially important to enable safe encounters between audiences and performers,” she says.
“I am genuinely pleased and delighted that Naantali Music Festival has appointed Suvi Innilä, a splendid professional with a wealth of experience, who has successfully implemented a wide variety of culture projects. Naantali Music Festival can now go forward, secure in the knowledge that its future is in good hands,” Tiina Tunturi continues.
Naantali Music Festival was founded in 1980 on the initiative of cellist Arto Noras. It celebrated its 40th anniversary last year, attracting a record total of nearly 20,000 visitors and concertgoers.
The next Naantali Music Festival will be held between 8 and 19 June 2021.
For further details, please contact:
Tiina Tunturi, Executive Director
tiina.tunturi@naantali.fi, +358 44 516 1718
www.naantalinmusiikkijuhlat.fi