Elina Vähälä
Finnish violinist
Laura Elina Vähälä (born 15 October 1975, Iowa City, Iowa) is a Finnish classical violinist.
Biography
Born in the United States in Iowa City, Iowa, Vähälä began violin studies at the age of three, following her family's return to Finland, at the Lahti conservatory. Her teachers at Lahti included Seppo Reinikainen and Pertti Sutinen. She also studied at the Kuhmo Violin School with Zinaida Gilels, Ilya Grubert and Pavel Vernikov. At the Sibelius Academy Vähälä's teacher was Tuomas Haapanen.
Vähälä made her concerto debut at age 12 with the Lahti Symphony Orchestra (Sinfonia Lahti), conducted by Osmo Vänskä. Vähälä subsequently served as "Young Master Soloist" for the 1993-1994 season with Sinfonia Lahti. Since then, she has regularly collaborated with Sinfonia Lahti on a regular basis, performing as featured soloist on tours in Sweden, UK, South America and Central Europe.
Vähälä was one of the winners of the 1999 Young Concert Artists competition in New York. She gave her New York debut at the 92nd Street Y in 1999.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3438814. VIAF identifies the subject as 28990040. The Library of Congress control number is n2007087120. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1975, 1993, 1994 and 1999.
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This entry incorporates text from “Elina Vähälä” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.