ERIK SÖDERBLOM
Stage director
 Erik Söderblom is one of the hottest names in Finnish music theatre. He began his arts career with lessons on the piano and cello, and studied musicology, philosophy and art history at the University of Helsinki. In the early 1980s he spent some time in London before moving on to Munich to study music theatre direction at the Music Academy. From 1983 onwards he was conductor of the Helsinki Chamber Strings while also studying at the Theatre Academy of Finland in Helsinki. Since graduating from the Academy as a stage director, he has directed spoken and music theatre both in Finland and abroad. His most recent assignments have been the premieres of Tapio Tuomela's Mothers and Daughters and Lars Karlsson's Rödhamn at the Finnish National Opera.
Erik Söderblom has been involved with the Q-Theatre in Helsinki, which has fast become one of the leading non-institutional theatre groups in Finland, ever since it was founded and the Chairman of its Board from 1996 to 2001; for the Q-Theatre he has, for example, directed Shakespeare's Hamlet and Twelfth Night, Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground and Tolstoy's War and Peace. He is one of the initiators of the Baltic Circle project hatched by the Q-Theatre to promote theatre exchange in the Nordic and Baltic countries and is Artistic Director of the Baltic Circle theatre festival.
Since 2001 Erik Söderblom has been Professor of acting at the Theatre Academy of Finland, and is since autumn 2005 it´s vice rektor.
Here in Turku Erik Söderblom has taught music theatre at the Arts Academy and directed at the City Theatre. He is also remembered for the musical spectacles Harlekiinien yö and Kukoistavat taiteet and for the opera Sulhaset koetuksella based on music by Mozart staged in Turku Castle during the Music Festival. He has directed Verdi's Il Trovatore for the Turku Opera Association.
This autumn Erik Söderblom will be stage directing the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra production of Béla Bartók's opera Duke Bluebeard's Castle at the Concert Hall.
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