Lunchtime music - Summer dreams

Marko Tuupainen, tenor and violinist

Katja Mäkiö, alto, organ and piano

Bizet, Massenet, Saint-Saëns and music from the musical The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Marko Tuupainen is a freelance artist with extensive performing experience. He performs both classical and light music as a singer (tenor), violinist, pianist and actor. During his career, he has performed at, among others, the Savonlinna Opera Festival, the Finnish National Opera, the Tampere Workers' Theatre, the Tampere Theatre, the Tampere Hall, the Aleksanteri Theatre, the Savoy Theatre and the Linnateatteri. He has also performed in numerous countries outside Finland.

Tuupainen works regularly as the voice director of the tenors of the Finnish Philharmonic Society and the professional choir Tampere Cappella. During her career, she has interpreted a wide range of different roles in opera, musicals and theatre. Her most recent roles include the role of the Cossack Fedja in the opera Isoviha, which was performed at the Ilmajoki Music Festival.

In the summer, she can also be seen singing in the musical The Hunchback of Notre Dame at the Samppalinna Summer Theatre.

Master of Music and Music Pedagogue (AMK) Katja Mäkiö works as a cantor at the Tampere Cathedral Parish.

Katja has performed extensively both as an instrumentalist and as a viola soloist in several church music works, including W.A. Mozart's Requiem, J.S. Bach's St. John Passion, the Mass in B minor and G.F. Handel's Messiah oratorio. She has studied organ playing, choir conducting and singing at, among others, at the Sibelius Academy, the Lübeck College of Music and the Metropolia University of Applied Sciences. He has studied singing under Sirkka Haavisto, Aulikki Eerola and Ulla Raiskio, among others.

Mäkiö has worked as a choral conducting instructor at the Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki, and he is the voice director of the alto section of the national Finnish Cantor Choir Chorus Cantorum Finlandiae and a viola singer in the professional chamber choir Tampere Cappella.