Early Music alum: Finding a musical mind of my own
I learned to understand the reasons behind the different artistic choices and to create a musical mind of my own.
JOHANNA RANDVERE, Early Music, ESTONIA
As a child, Johanna grew to love baroque music and dreamed of becoming a musician of early music. At the Sibelius Academy, she enjoyed the opportunity to explore a wide variety of early musical instruments, with the baroque cello and viola de gamba interesting her the most.
“Students at the Sibelius Academy are surrounded by exceptional facilities and resources. The three buildings create a lot of opportunities for practice with various instruments and recording equipment. The music library is fantastic for both music and books, making research opportunities easily available. This helped me to broaden my knowledge and skills.
This is a large and very international school, so I was always meeting new people from different countries. The Early Music department is a strong and friendly little community where you know everybody. Teachers and students are almost like colleagues. We worked together and talked a lot with one another.
I had lots of individual instruction but my teachers didn’t tell me exactly what to do. We were expected to organise our own studies and take responsibility for how we develop our music. I learned to understand the reasons behind the different artistic choices and to create a musical mind of my own. This kind of pedagogy makes the Sibelius Academy an innovative university that fosters elemental skills for life.”