Dalia Stasevska has been immersed in different languages and cultures all her life. Her parents – her father is Ukrainian and her mother Finnish – are both artists. She was born in Kyiv in 1984 and fled with her family from the former Soviet Union to Finland at the age of five. With their Ukrainian grandmother living with the family, the Ukrainian language, traditional food and folk songs remained ever present in Dalia and her brothers’ childhoods. Self-confident, Stasevska boldly went her own way. When she saw someone being bullied, she intervened. Taking violin lessons, she discovers opera at the age of 13 and was fascinated by the beauty of orchestral music. While her friends partied to the music of the Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys, Stasevska was drawn to opera. Puccini’s Madama Butterfly blew the teenager away. “Opera was something like punk to me,” she says in an interview. That her peers considered this strange and said as much only encouraged her.
“I knew it was unusual and I was glad to be different.”
Her name, Dalia, comes from Lithuanian mythology and means destiny, luck or fate. Not one to rely on luck, however, the young Stasevska resolutely took her fate into her own hands, studying violin and composition in Tampere, Finland. Inspired by a fellow student, she tried her hand at conducting in her early 20s, even pawning her violin to finance masterclasses. Her conducting studies took her to the Royal Swedish Academy of Music in Stockholm and the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. She assisted Paavo Järvi at the Orchestre de Paris and soon gained international experience with renowned orchestras. Stasevska has been Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra since 2019 and Principal Conductor of Sinfonia Lahti since 2021.
Among her inspirations, she counts the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo and Leonard Bernstein, who, she says, always thought outside the box. The all-rounder Stasevska likes to challenge both herself and her audiences, with opera, classical music and contemporary works. On her 2024 album, Dalia’s Mixtape, she presents ten contemporary compositions and explains in Instagram videos what fascinates her about each of the soundscapes.
She aims to encourage young people to experience music without bias, free from their preconceived ideas of different genres. Her almost two-year-old daughter is also growing up in a world of music, not least since her father is also a musician: Lauri Porra is a composer, bassist of the successful power metal band Statovarius and the great-grandson of Jean Sibelius. Dalia Stasevska and her husband also undertake joint music projects.
“Music is a place where the worst enemies can sit side by side and experience the same feelings.”
There was a time when the otherwise rather irrepressible Finn with Ukrainian roots felt that she has to stop making music. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, she decided to devote herself fully to helping her father’s home country. Together with her brothers, she collected donations for relief supplies and delivered these to the war-torn country herself. But she soon realised that she could use music, her hands and her voice in a variety of ways to help the Ukrainian people. She now conducts orchestral concerts in Lviv, seeing music as a safe place to come together. These extreme experiences have given her a new sense of freedom for her self-image as an artist. The music industry and artists’ image mean nothing to her when it comes to achieving things with music. Stasevska wants everyone to experience the power and joy of music: “As long as we are here and playing, we are indestructible.”
Text: Maria Zimmerer
