Lilli Maijala gave her first solo performance with the Oulu Symphony Orchestra at the age of 17 and has since appeared regularly as both a soloist and a chamber musician on stages across Europe.
In recent years she has appeared with orchestras including the Helsinki Philharmonic, the Lapland Chamber Orchestra, Sinfonia Lahti, Camerata Salzburg, Folkwang Kammerorchester Essen and Tapiola Sinfonietta.
In 2013 she premiered the viola concerto of Lauri Kilpiö with Jyväskylä Sinfonia.
The premiere CD recording of Pehr Henrik Nordgren’s Concerto for viola, double bass and chamber orchestra with the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra, conductor Juha Kangas and bass player Olivier Thiery was published in January 2019 with excellent reviews.
Lilli Maijala studied the viola at the Sibelius Academy, Hochschule für Musik Detmold and the Edsberg Chamber Music Institute with teachers such as Teemu Kupiainen, Diemut Poppen and Lars Anders Tomter. A first prize winner of the viola competition Klassik Festival Ruhr, held in conjunction with music academies across Europe, Maijala has won numerous awards, including second prize at the Nordic Viola Competition and special prizes at the ARD Competition Munich and Tokyo International Viola Competition.
Maijala was a member of the critically acclaimed, fearless quartet-lab with cellist Pieter Wispelwey and violinists Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Pekka Kuusisto. Based in Amsterdam, she’s currently dividing her time between the teaching post at the Sibelius Academy and international music festivals as West Cork, IMS Prussia Cove, Resonances, Peasmarsh, Schiermonnikoog. Alongside the Jean Baptiste Vuillaume viola, on loan by kind permission of the Finnish Cultural Foundation, Lilli Maijala also performs on baroque viola.