Final concert of the International Master Class

Janne Saksala

Janne Saksala was born in Helsinki in 1967. At the age of seven he received his first piano lessons at the Music School West Helsinki, where he also became a double bass student of Jiri Parviainen in 1981. After graduating from high school in 1986, he studied double bass at the Berlin "Hochschule der Künste" under Prof. Klaus Stoll. He found further important inspiration in master classes with Duncan McTier and Frantisek Posta, as well as with Prof. Ilan Gronich (violin). In 1991 he won a prize at the ARD International Music Competition in Munich.
Janne Saksala took up his first orchestral position with the Berliner Philharmoniker in 1993 and has been the first solo bassist in the same orchestra since 2008. Janne Saksala has appeared as a soloist with the Bavarian Radio Orchestra, the Philharmonie Baden-Baden, the Thüringen Philharmonie Gotha-Eisenach, the Pori Sinfonietta and the Prague Philharmonic.

Janne Saksala has been performing for many years in various chamber music ensembles with musicians such as Isabelle Faust, Leonidas Kavakos, Guy Braunstein, Rainer Kussmaul, Renaud and Gautier Capucon, Kolja Blacher, Jan-Arne Söderblom, Pekka Kuusisto, Benjamin Schmid, Wolfgang Christ, Jan Vogler, Thomas Demenga, Jan-Erik Gustafsson, Leif Ove Andsnes, Olli Mustonen and Igor Levit. He has played worldwide with the Ensemble Oriol, the Stradivari Soloists, the 12 Cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic and the Berlin Philharmonic Jazz Group.

Janne Saksala teaches double bass at the "Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler" in Berlin. He also teaches at the Carl Flesch Academy Baden-Baden and as a guest lecturer at the Escuela Superior de Musical Reina Sofia in Madrid, at the Royal College of Music in London, at the Toho Gakuen School of Music Tokyo and the Juilliard School of Music in New York, among others, and holds workshops with youth and professional orchestras and their bass groups.

He spends his free time with his family, reading, playing baritone guitar and occasionally enjoying a good whisky.