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Keval is the founder and artistic director of the Sibelius Academy’s Soiva Kieli song recital series. Hosted in Hesinki’s Musiikkitalo, the series’ mission is to bring the widest possible variety of song repertoire to the recital platform, presenting both familiar and unfamiliar music in a challenging and revealing way. Each season, the series features between four and six concerts, including one semi-staged production directed by renowned director Martina Roos.

 

As Artistic Director, Keval’s vision is that the series reflects the enormous richness of the song repertoire, and that it serves both a pedagogic and artistic purpose - challenging and inspiring students and audiences to discover the almost infinite possibilities of song. The series also offers the chance for students to share the stage with the Sibelius Academy’s renowned faculty of professors, engendering an artistic dialogue across generations. Previous concerts in the series have included evenings devoted to Pauline Viardot, a staged exploration of the intersection of Nordic song and the global climate emergency, a programme of ‘Covid reflections’,  and three Schubertiades to celebrate the 225th anniversary of Franz Schubert’s birth.

 

Soiva Kieli concerts in the 2022-2023 season include a programme of Ukrainian song, an evening of music by the forgotten women composers of the Viennese and Parisian fin-de-siècle, and a semi-staged performance of songs and solo piano music by Felix Mendelssohn and Fanny Hensel. Also in 2023, the Soiva Kieli series will partner with Musica Nova, one of Europe’s most important contemporary music festivals, to mark International Women’s Day with a recital of 21st century songs by women composers from across the world.