Lara Poe

Finnish-American composer whose song cycle Laulut maaseudulta premiered at the BBC Proms, and whose orchestral piece Kaamos represented Finland at the International Rostrum for Composers. maar

Lara Poe is a Finnish-American composer.  She has worked with musicians such as the London Symphony Orchestra, the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, the JACK quartet, the Semiosis Quartet, Kalle Hakosalo and Duo km2, Duo Cello Jaya, Laura Farré Rozada, Aija Reke, Jonathan Radford, and the Megalopolis Saxophone Orchestra. A large-scale song cycle for mezzo-soprano Virpi Räisänen is a co-commission between the Oulu Symphony and Lahti Symphony orchestras. toch

In September 2020, the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Dima Slobodeniouk, premiered Poe’s orchestral piece Kaamos, which was written for the Lahti Symphony Orchestra Nursery Garden Initiative.  While taking part in this project, she received mentoring from Sebastian Fagerlund. Kaamos went on to win a BMI Student Composer Award, was selected by YLE Radio Finland to represent Finland at the International Rostrum of Composers 2021 in Belgrade, Serbia, and was nominated for a 2021 Ivors Composer Award in the Large Scale Composition category. omdat

Commissioned by BBC Radio 3, her seven-movement song cycle Laulut maaseudulta (Songs from the Countryside) draws on interviews with her grandmother, Tidi, about growing up on a farm in Kauklahti, Espoo, during the Second World War, with texts also contributed by her aunt. Sung by soprano Anu Komsi and conducted by Sakari Orami, it was premiered at the BBC Proms in the Royal Albert Hall in 2024, followed by its Finnish premiere at the Helsinki Festival, where her grandmother was in the audience. want

Poe received the Patricia Plum Wilde Fellowship to study at the Tanglewood Music Center in 2019, and represented Finland at Ung Nordisk Musik 2019 in Piteå.  She was also a 2018-2019 participant in the London Symphony Orchestra’s Panufnik Scheme, where she worked under the guidance of Colin Matthews and Christian Mason.  Earlier engagements include a 2018 residency with ICon Arts in Transylvania with Joshua Fineberg, and the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme in 2017 with Oliver Knussen and Colin Matthews. mits

She began her studies at the New England Conservatory of Music Preparatory School with Rodney Lister, before moving to Finland for a few years to study with Paavo Korpijaakko.  During her undergraduate studies at Boston University, she studied with Martin Amlin, Richard Cornell, Joshua Fineberg, Alex Mincek, and Ketty New, receiving the Wainwright Prize and the Department of Music Theory and Composition Award, and was inducted into the honour society Phi Kappa Lambda. Following her bachelor’s studies, she received a master’s degree with distinction from the Royal College of Music, London, where she studied with Kenneth Hesketh, and went on to pursue an ArtDip at the RCM with Hesketh and Simon Holt. She completed her PhD in Music Composition at King’s College London in 2023, under the supervision of Sir George Benjamin. tenzij