Susanna Mälkki very quickly obtained recognition on the international conducting circuit.  Her versatility and broad repertoire have taken her to symphony orchestras, chamber orchestras, contemporary music ensembles and opera. She is currently Music Director of the Ensemble intercontemporain and she was Artistic Director of the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra until the end of 2005. 
Born in Helsinki, Susanna Mälkki had a successful career as a cellist before studying conducting under Jorma Panula and Leif Segerstam at the Sibelius Academy. From 1995 to 1998, she was principal cello at the Gothenberg Symphony Orchestra in Sweden - an orchestra she now guest conducts regularly.
Very committed to contemporary music, she had worked regularly with many ensembles before conducting the Ensemble intercontemporain for the first time in an all-Birtwistle programme at the Lucerne Festival in 2004. The concert was the catalyst for her appointment as Music Director. In March 2007, she conducted the thirtieth anniversary concert of the Ensemble alongside with Pierre Boulez and Peter Eötvös.
In 1999, she conducted the Finnish premiere of Thomas Ades's Powder Her Face at the Musica Nova Festival in Helsinki and was subsequently invited by the composer to conduct further performances during a series at the 1999 Almeida Festival in London, and on tour in the UK.
Other opera commitments have recently included Neither by Morton Feldman, from a text by Samuel Beckett in Copenhagen, Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss and Kaija Saariaho's L'Amour de Loin at the Finnish National Opera. She also conducted Saariaho's La Passion de Simone in Vienna (2006) for the world premiere and in New York, at the Lincoln Center (August 2008). In spring 2010 Susanna Mälkki will conduct the world premiere of a ballet by Bruno Mantovani at the Paris Opera.
In recent seasons, Susanna Mälkki has conducted many prestigious orchestras including Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Wiener Symphoniker, Munich Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony, Philharmonia Orchestra, Radio France Philharmonic, Finnish Radio Symphony, BBC Symphony (London), NDR Hamburg and Montreal symphony.
Current and future seasons abound with new projects, including concerts, recordings and academy workshops with various ensembles and musical institutions: Detroit, Atlanta and Saint Louis orchestras, BBC Symphony Orchestra at the BBC Proms, Bayerischer Rundfunk, NHK (Tokyo), Swedish Radio and Radio France orchestras, San Francisco Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic, Carnegie Academy at Carnegie Hall.

January 2009