Joensuu City Orchestra

The Joensuu City Orchestra with its 35 musicians is an energetic ensemble with a varied repertoire. Its home venue is the Carelia Hall of the University of Eastern Finland. In a year the orchestra gives about 110 concerts, of which less than a third are symphonic concerts. The repertoire also consists of baroque, church, chamber and entertainment concerts, and concerts for children and young persons. The orchestra does a significant amount of community work and regularly pays visits for example to the schools, local senior centers and other such institutions. The orchestra performs regularly also in various festivals, for example Lieksa Brass Week and Ilosaarirock Festival.

Orchestral activity in Joensuu began in the turn of the 20th century. The foundation for the present-day orchestra was laid in 1953 and it was municipalized in 1978. The orchestra's first Artistic Director was Pekka Haapasalo. Following him were Juozas Domarkas, Atso Almila, Hannu Koivula, Esa Heikkilä and Jurjen Hempel. Atso Almila held again the title of Artistic Director from autumn 2011 to spring 2013. After that he was appointed orchestra’s first Conductor Laureate.  He held the title until 2020. Eero Lehtimäki started as the Artistic Director in autumn 2019 as orchestra’s artistic partners Minna Pensola and Iiro Rantala.

A recording made of the world premiere of Einojuhani Rautavaara's opera Thomas, which took place at the 1985 Joensuu Festival, was chosen as the Record of the Year by the Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE. Since then, the orchestra has recorded orchestral music by Kalervo Tuukkanen (Alba), a CD entitled Elegy with trumpeter Jouko Harjanne (Cryston), a CD containing Chopin's piano concertos with pianist Janne Mertanen (Alba 2007) and has made recordings of film scores and featured on various Finnish popular artists' recordings.