Tomi Punkeri

Finnish baritone Tomi Punkeri works across staged opera, concert opera and oratorio. In 2026, he sang Schobiack in semi-staged performances of Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Nicholas Collon at the Helsinki Festival and Musikfest Berlin. With the same orchestra, he had appeared as Shaklovity in Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina under Esa-Pekka Salonen in Helsinki and Stockholm in 2024.

New Finnish opera is a further focus. At Ilmajoen musiikkijuhlat, Mr. Punkeri returned to Mikko in Uljas Pulkkis’s Isoviha in 2026, having created the role in 2025. He had previously portrayed Abraham Ojanperä in Jukka Linkola’s Abrahamin pidot in Helsinki and Liminka.

From 2020 to 2022, Mr. Punkeri belonged to the Royal Danish Opera’s Young Artist Programme. His repertoire with the company ranged from Dandini in La Cenerentola and Masetto in Don Giovanni to Ned Keene in Peter Grimes and Karl in David Bruce’s Intet. He has also sung Schaunard in La bohème and the Steuermann in Tristan und Isolde with the company. Papageno in Die Zauberflöte brought him to Oulu Theatre.

Bach and the European oratorio tradition are central to Mr. Punkeri’s concert work. His repertoire includes Bach’s St Matthew Passion, St John Passion and Mass in B minor, alongside Mendelssohn’s Elijah, the requiems of Mozart and Fauré and Haydn’s Missa in tempore belli. In 2025, he performed Bach with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Mozart’s Requiem with the Malmö Symphony Orchestra and Elijah with Cantio Laudis.

His wider orchestral partners include the Royal Danish Orchestra, Turku Philharmonic Orchestra, Tapiola Sinfonietta and Finnish Baroque Orchestra, as well as the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra and the orchestras of Oulu and Vaasa. He has also worked with Kymi Sinfonietta and conductors Paolo Carignani, Gábor Takács-Nagy, Julia Jones and Stuart Stratford. His performances have been broadcast by Yle, BBC, Sveriges Radio and DR.

In 2023, Mr. Punkeri reached the final of the Klaudia Taev Competition, receiving the special prize for Ave Maria, and was nominated by CPHCulture for Opera Singer of the Year in Denmark. Other competition results include semifinal places at Belvedere in 2022, Wigmore Hall in 2019 and Montréal in 2018, a special prize at Lappeenranta in 2016 and second prize at the Helsinki Lied Competition in 2015.

He completed his master’s studies at the Royal Danish Opera Academy in 2020, having qualified as a church musician in Oulu in 2018. His teachers have included Anne Margrethe Dahl, Jens Søndergaard, Markku Liukkonen and Jarmo Junno.