Erkki Lauri Alste

Associate                                                                                               

Specialist for territories: Scandinavia, Baltic, United Kingdom, Italy, Asia

Erkki Lauri Alste holds a master of music degree from the Sibelius-Academy in Helsinki, majoring in violin, singing and choir conducting. His singing teachers include Liisa Linko-Malmio, Sauli Tiilikainen and the legendary Finnish baritone Jorma Hynninen. He continued his voice studies at the music conservatory in Aachen, Germany, in the class of Prof. Rudolf Bautz.

After his return to Finland he worked as a music teacher and led several choirs. From 1991 to 1996 he served as director of the popular "Tikkurila song classes" and concert cycle bound to the festival. In 1994 he started his first music agency named Orfeo Music, where he acted as a concert producer as well as agent for young Finnish opera singers, choirs, folklore groups and instrumentalists . From 1997 he started working as an artist manager at the Savonlinna Opera Agency bound to the well known international opera festival and created excellent contacts to many opera houses world wide.

In 2001 Erkki Alste moved to Germany and founded the agency Opera-Connection in Berlin together with a German pianist and opera agent Guido Mödersheim. Together with his associate Alste is proud to have discovered and helped many young artists in the beginning of their careers, among them sopranos Kirsi Tiihonen and Olga Mykytenko, mezzo-soprano Elina Granaca, tenors Jaechul Bae and Luc Robert, baritone Vladislav Sulimsky and basses Taras Shtonda and Kihwan Sim, who are nowdays singing in some of the biggest opera houses of the world.