Maria Puusaari

Maria Puusaari entered the Junior Sibelius Academy when she was 18 in 1995 and a year later the Department of Solo Performance as a pupil of Merit Palas. She has attended many master classes, by Mi-Kyung Lee, Ana Chumachenko, Jacques Ghestem, Khalida Akhtiamova and others and spent the 2001/02 academic year at the Liszt Academy in Budapest studying with Vilmos Szabadi. Her teachers in chamber music have been Teemu Kupiainen, Ralf Gothóni and Sir Martin Lowett. As of October 2002 Maria Puusaari has been a member of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. She is known especially for her performances of contemporary music, has premiered works by a number of Nordic composers and worked in close partnership with such young Finnish composers as Pulkkis, Räihälä and Savikangas. She is a founding member and the leader of the Uusinta Chamber Ensemble and Uusinta String Quartet and has appeared outside Finland in France, Holland, Hungary and Poland.