Liam Mansfield

Liam Mansfield (b. 1996) had always felt an inexplicable attraction to the violin, yet he began his musical pursuits by playing the piano. That road came to a dead end with his strict and elderly teacher’s demands to wake up at four in the morning to practice scales before the school day. Liam got his hands on a violin at the age of 11, and ever since he has been playing it with an almost obsessive passion.

His dreams of becoming a professional musician were awakened after he attended a concert by the Las Vegas Philharmonic in his hometown. He experienced a truly mind-blowing moment at a Thanksgiving concert in New York at the age of 16, when Leonidas Kavakos performed Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto as the soloist with the New York Philharmonic. “He literally destroyed it!” Mansfield recalls. “After the first movement, the entire audience burst into applause. I’ll never forget it; I was blown away.”

Mansfield studied under Alexander Kerr and Georgia Fleezanis in Bloomington, Indiana, and later under Christoph Poppen, Lena Neudauer and Markus Wolf in Munich. He moved to Finland in August 2022 after earning a seat with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra. Half-Polish and having spent most of his childhood summers in Europe, Mansfield was already familiar with the culture and political atmosphere of the old continent. In Finland, he was particularly interested in democratic society and attitudes.

“The Finnish understanding of equality has perfectly matched my vision of a truly equal society,” says Mansfield. “The repertoire of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra is also very open-minded and innovative, and the attitude to work is holistic. It feels like we are all one family.”

In orchestra work, Mansfield’s favourite composers are Brahms, Beethoven, Bach and Mozart, but outside of the Musiikkitalo concert venue, he also plays electronic music as a DJ and has his own show on the online community radio station IDA.

Jaani Länsiö