Originally from Finland, Lauri Supponen has spent most of his life divided between his home-country, Belgium and the United Kingdom. He started playing double bass at the age of six and oboe at twelve, studying at the Keski-Helsingin Musiikkiopisto in Helsinki. In Belgium, he continued his instrumental studies privately with Pierre Boigelot and Olivier Habran and later with David Theodore at the Royal College of Music in London. The first public performances of his compositions were Trio, played by a school wind trio in 2003 at fifteen and Scherzo (2004) for violin and piano, which was premiered for the President of Finland during her visit to the European School in Brussels.
Lauri
graduated in summer 2011 with a first class honours Bachelor’s degree
in composition with Dr. Jonathan Cole at the RCM, having previously
studied with Alison Kay and with Daniel Ott at the Universität der
Künste in Berlin. He has attended masterclasses with Mark-Anthony
Turnage, Liza Lim, Julian Anderson, HK Gruber and Simon Holt. He has had
piece played by the Ossian Ensemble, Contemporary Consort, Avanti! and
Mercury 4tet, who commissioned Diacritiques for their Autumn 2011 Radar-series in London.
In
July 2009, Lauri attended the summer course for Contemporary
Composition and Performance, led by Oliver Knussen, Colin Matthews and
Magnus Lindberg as part of the ‘Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme’ in
Aldeburgh. His piece Fras for 15 instrumentalists was performed as part of the course. In March 2010 his piece Orastus
for piano sextet was performed as one of the 6 finalist pieces for the
Heidelberger Atelier prize. This was preceded by a workshop headed by
Matthias Pintscher, part of the Heidelberger Frühling Festival. In
summer 2011, Lauri moved back to Finland and took part in the
composition course taught by Jouni Kaipainen and Jukka Tiensuu organised
alongside the Porvoo Summer Sounds Festival.
Future
projects include a piece for the Apeldoorn Young Composers Meeting and a
Royal Philharmonic Society commission for the 2012 Cheltenham Festival.
