A PhD student reflection: the Sibelius Academy Doctoral Study Exchange

As the academic year draws to a close, PhD student Madison Marshall reflects on the doctoral programme that took a group of students to the Sibelius Academy in autumn 2025.

Our arrival in Finland was met by a landscape draped in mist. We made ourselves cozy at Kallio-Kuninkala, a charming country house from the 1920s, owned and operated by the University of the Arts Helsinki. There we were treated by staff to veritable feasts of vegetarian fare.

Academy visitors comprised of myself, pianists Xiaowen Shang and Yuzhang Li, and doctoral faculty members Sarah Callis and Roderick Chadwick. We were joined by bandoneon player Mercedes Krapovickas Lilja, balafon player Maarika Auito, and faculty members Mieko Kanno and Evelina Sumelius-Lindblom from the Sibelius Academy. We had first met online in October to share introductory presentations of our doctoral projects and begin brainstorming workshop ideas. Despite the diversity of our research projects – a range that included practice techniques, early music, contemporary embedded concert assumptions, and the instrument as interpretive lens – we discovered surprising, striking commonalities: deep, personal connections to our instruments, our concepts of musical ownership, and our approaches to musical advocacy.

We began the workshops with an exercise led by Mercedes, who took us on an outdoor listening adventure. We were tasked with conveying to the group a sound we observed using only physical gestures, and later, to translate those gestures into new sound forms on our instruments. Maarika led further experiments in presence and embodiment, asking pairs of participants to imagine gestural responses to joint musical improvisations. Yuzhang dedicated multiple workshops to “encounter practice,” exploring the unique colours and compositional facets brought out by practicing using extremely slow, meditative tempi. Using recorded examples from a variety of performers, Xiaowen asked us to reimagine our relationship with entering and exiting the stage, and with what being a female creative meant in the 21st century. My own workshops provided invaluable forays into many of the practical questions of adapting vocal works by Barbara Strozzi for the viola.

We capped off our final night of the trip with a nocturnal stroll through the Finnish countryside, glimpsing the hillside exterior of Ainola, the longtime home of Jean Sibelius. That Sibelius would choose Järvenpää as his longtime creative retreat came as no surprise to us, reflecting on two rewarding days of escaping the noise to find the music.