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Art does not just magically appear in the world as a gift of grace that comes from divine inspiration. It is created through persistent and devoted work. This work is always funded by someone who has their own expectations of what to receive in return for their support.

The concept of a national musical language made its way to Finland in the 1800s. One of the culminations of this new wave was the premiere performance of Sibelius’s Kullervo. The birth of this epic music historical tale was influenced by a number of endeavours, ideas and occurrences.

The Sibelius Academy, Finland’s only music university, has for the past two years been part of the University of the Arts trio, together with the Theatre Academy and the Academy of Fine Arts. What does the future sound like for the Sibelius Academy?

Someone once described Finland as an orchestral utopia. And we are indeed said to have more orchestras per capita than any other country in the world.

The latest Finnish examples of using multimedia to add to the way people experience music via use of new media are augmented reality application Arilyn, and SibHack, an event for programmers.

What happened when Jean Sibelius and Larin Paraske met? This is one way to imagine the scene, from the runo singer’s point of view.

What relevance does Sibelius – and his big anniversary – hold for the wider Finnish music and culture scene in 2015? Andrew Mellor asked five musicians from outside the classical music tradition.

Following the general European trend, musical meanings that could be interpreted as nationalistic were put to use in Finland during the first half of the 20th century. The propaganda and educational film industries used music by Sibelius, among others.

The International Minifiddlers distance-learning project is testing a new kind of learning environment for studying the violin. At the same time the East Helsinki Music Institute is searching for ways to bring high-quality music education within reach of even more people.