Conductor and tenor, and Kymi Sinfonietta’s artistic partner for 2023-2026, Topi Lehtipuu is one of Finland’s most internationally acclaimed musicians. He is a versatile and virtuosic performer whose extensive tenor repertoire includes early music, Bach, Mozart as well as contemporary music. He has collaborated with conductors including Ivor Bolton, René Jacobs, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Riccardo Muti, Sir Simon Rattle, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Daniel Harding. Notable directors include Alex Ollé, Claus Guth, Christof Loy, Barrie Kosky, Laurent Pelly and Peter Sellars.
Alongside his artistic career, Lehtipuu served as the artistic director and CEO of the Helsinki Festival from 2015-2018, artistic director of the Turku Music Festival from 2010-2015, and is the founder of the cultural advisory company Long Play Lab, having advised e.g. in 2025 on creating a new Music Academy in South-East Asia, creating a Youth Orchestra in the UAE, and building a new Music City in India in 2026-2028.
Recent singing highlights include the leading role in the opera Frankenstein commissioned by Monnaie/De Munt theatre from Mark Grey, and performing in Tero Saarinen’s interdisciplinary Third Practice production set to Monteverdi’s music. Other projects have included the role of the Witch in Hansel and Gretel with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Andrew Davis, and a return to the Salzburg Mozart Week. Recent premieres include Eötvös’s Oratorium Balbulum composed for Lehtipuu, performing at the Salzburg Festival with the Vienna Philharmonic and Daniel Harding, followed by performances in Vienna, Budapest, Cologne, Zurich and Sydney.
As an advocate for contemporary music, Lehtipuu is regularly invited to premiere new works, examples including Jukka Tiensuu’s Mora and Brett Dean’s From Melodious Lay with the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra. Other highlights include performances of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in New York and at the BBC Proms with Peter Sellars, Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic. Lehtipuu can be heard on numerous recordings, including the Grammy-nominated DVD of The Rake’s Progress and the BBC Music Magazine Award-winning DVD of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Both DVDs were recorded at the Glyndebourne Festival. Lehtipuu appears on several St. Matthew Passion recordings, including the Grammy-nominated and ECHO Klassik Award-winning CD by the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin conducted by René Jacobs.
Lehtipuu has recently also garnered acclaim as a conductor, with highlights including the St. John Passion with the English ensemble Arcangelo and the Finnish Baroque Orchestra at the Helsinki Music Centre, and Mozart’s Requiem with Tapiola Sinfonietta and the Tapiola Chamber Choir.
His conducting repertoire ranges from Monteverdi to Escaich, with pieces such as Bach’s St Matthew Passion, Brahms’s Schicksalslied, Debussy’s La Petite Suite, Strauss’s Vier Letzte Lieder, Wagner’s Isoldes Liebestod, Stravinsky’s Rake’s Progress and Apollon Musagète, Britten’s Albert Herring and Escaich’s Baroque Song showing his musical versatility, with a special interest of dramatised concerts around orchestrated song and operatic aria repertoire, such as Schubert, Schumann and Bartók songs with Florian Boesch, Sibelius and Strauss songs and Verdi arias with Helena Juntunen, and Berg’s and Zemlinsky’s songs with Sandrine Piau.
He has conducted concerts with prominent vocal soloists such as Magdalena Lucjan, Sandrine Piau, Tuuli Takala, Lucile Richardot, Delphine Galou, Robin Tritschler, Tuomas Katajala, Florian Boesch, Tomi Punkeri, Ludwig Mittelhammer, Mika Kares, and Matthew Rose.
Lehtipuu has been invited to conduct again with Tapiola Sinfonietta, the Central Ostrobothnia Chamber Orchestra and the Finnish Baroque Orchestra, among others. The season 2026-2027 includes concerts with Tapiola Sinfonietta and Vaasa City Orchestra.
