Pia Siirala

Pia Siirala is a Finnish violinist, composer, and researcher affiliated with the Sibelius Academy at the University of the Arts Helsinki. She earned her PhD in 2024 through artistic research on the music of the Chukchi people in northeastern Siberia, focusing on their Personal Song tradition as both cultural identity marker and inspiration for contemporary composition. As concert master of Ensemble XXI (founded in 1989 with conductor Lygia O'Riordan), she has performed globally while integrating Siberian indigenous music into her creative practice.

Her fieldwork across Sakhalin, Kamchatka, and Chukotka from 2004–2019 documented over 1400 traditional songs. This research informs compositions like Polar Voices (2022) and Ulita's Walk (2022), premiered in Finland and Kosovo. She has also organized multimedia exhibitions, including Flow of Music (2022), and participated in educational initiatives like the Kone Foundation-supported concerts. Her work challenges Western classical music paradigms by exploring music as an inherent human quality rather than a technical product.