New foundation set up to give variety to concert offerings of future Helsinki Music Centre

Foundation instituted by City of Helsinki acts as loss guarantee fund for experimental performances

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The City of Helsinki has set up a foundation to diversify the future Helsinki Music Centre’s concert offerings. The foundation held its constitutive meeting on the quiet last week.
      The city has provided the foundation with a basic capital of EUR 100,000, in addition to which the foundation will have at its disposal the EUR one million already donated to the Music Centre by the Pro Musica Foundation a couple of years ago.
      Pro Musica Foundation was set up to support art music by former Chairman of the Confederation of Finnish Industries and former Nokia Chairman Lauri J. Kivekäs and his wife Elsa Kivekäs.
     
At the inaugural meeting of the new foundation, the Helsinki Music Centre’s director Helena Hiilivirta was elected as its secretary.
      According to Hiilivirta, the foundation’s role first and foremost is to provide funding for the kind of offerings that are not on the agenda of the Music Centre’s principal occupants the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Sibelius Academy.
      The foundation will only provide grants and support for performances organised in the Music Centre or in the outside space in front of it, but it will not endorse activities of the the main occupants.
     
In Hiilivirta’s view “the foundation will act as a kind of loss guarantee fund” that will make it possible to organise even slightly more experimental art music performances in the building, which is to be completed in two years' time in a prime location in Helsinki’s Töölönlahti area, opposite the Parliament House.
      Hiilivirta emphasises that the foundation is only in its infancy. Even its establishment was meant to be announced only in September, as right now the organisation does not even have grant application forms printed out yet.
     
According to Hiilivirta, the foundation will aim to collect as much funding as possible for example from businesses.
      “We have not set any exact targets, though. In the current financial climate that would be rather a pointless exercise.”
      The chairperson of the foundation’s three-strong board is Helsinki Deputy Mayor Tuula Haatainen. On the board she is accompanied by General Manager Elina Siltanen from the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra and Rector Gustav Djupsjöbacka of the Sibelius Academy.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Several private investors willing to finance Helsinki Music Centre (19.12.2007)

See also:
  Helsinki Music Centre to be completed by spring of 2011 (18.6.2008)

Links:
  Helsinki Music Centre

Helsingin Sanomat