Trio Lago is a piano trio founded in the summer of 2019 by Mirka Malmi, Ida-Vilhelmiina Sinivalo, and Tiina Karakorpi. Its repertoire focuses particularly on performing works by female composers from history and bringing them back into concert programs. In 2020–2021, Trio Lago participated in the Yhdenvertaisesti säveltäen (Composing Equally) project organized by the Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki. From 2022 to 2026, Trio Lago will work on the Laura Netzel concerts supported by TAIKE and Svenska kulturfonden.

Violinist Mirka Malmi has worked extensively with music by female composers. Malmi’s eight-part concert series Nainen ja Viulu (Woman and Violin, 2018–2020) presented violin and chamber music by Nordic female composers from 1850 to 1950. The concert series culminated in the premiere of Ida Moberg’s violin concerto (Tondikt II, ca. 1910–1930s), with Malmi as the soloist. In November 2021, Malmi and pianist Tiina Karakorpi released the album Toisia suomalaisia viulusävelmiä (Other Finnish Violin Pieces) (Alba Records) and a sheet music edition (Fennica Gehrman), which contain 12 pieces for violin and piano by Finnish-born female composers from the late 19th century. Since the fall of 2023, Malmi has pursued a postgraduate degree at the Sibelius Academy’s DocMus doctoral school, focusing on the emergence of identity among female musicians and composers.

Malmi is a violinist with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and an active chamber musician. She plays in several ensembles, including the RSO’s chamber music projects, and her concerts are regularly broadcast on YLE Radio 1. Malmi performs at various music festivals and premieres new music. In 2019, Malmi released two recordings: 4 Strings 4 Seasons (Pilfink Records) with the Rapola Quartet and Dawn Breaks (Ravello Records), which features Maija Hynninen’s composition …sicut aurora procedit for solo violin and live electronics.

Malmi is interested in projects that combine the performing arts. In 2015, Malmi collaborated with aerial acrobat Ilona Jäntti and composer Maija Hynninen on the joint project Pix Graeca, which premiered at the Helsinki Musiikkitalo. Her collaboration with Ilona Jäntti continued in the work Ysaÿe Project, which also featured acrobat Natalie Reckert. Ysaÿe Project premiered at the Young Dance Zug festival in Switzerland in September 2017. In the fall of 2018, Malmi collaborated with violinist Elisa Rusi-Matero on Tyler Futrell’s performance piece Pas de deux at the Nordic Music Days.

Iida-Vilhelmiina Sinivalo is a cellist from Halikko who is particularly interested in the versatile expressive power of her instrument in contemporary music and different musical genres. She is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in the arts at the Sibelius Academy’s DocMus doctoral school.

Sinivalo, who graduated with a master’s degree from the Sibelius Academy in 2016 under the guidance of Arto Noras and Timo Hanhinen, has also gained valuable additional knowledge over the years through numerous master classes and workshops focusing on different musical genres. The cellist, who is open to new projects, can be heard in a wide variety of productions and projects combining different art forms. In addition to solo performances, she has performed in Finland and abroad as an ensemble, chamber, and orchestra musician, as well as an improviser and studio musician. As a chamber musician, she works with Trio Lago and as a cellist with the Earth Ears Ensemble, among others. She has taught at the East Helsinki Music Institute, among other places. Sinivalo plays a Patrick Robin cello granted to him by the Finnish Cultural Foundation.

Pianist Tiina Karakorpi performs regularly as a soloist and chamber musician. She has played as a soloist with the Tapiola Sinfonietta and the Vatican Orchestra, among others, and has performed at numerous music festivals in Finland and abroad.

In the summer of 2017, Karakorpi played her own concert at Sibelius’s home Ainola at the Our Festival conducted by Pekka Kuusisto. The summer of 2017 also saw the premiere of Cecilia Damström’s piano quintet “Minna” at the Kokonainen Festival in Janakkala Church. In October 2017, Alba Records released an album featuring the KAAÅS Trio performing Helvi Leiviskä’s Piano Trio (1925). The recording is the world premiere recording of Leiviskä’s Piano Trio.

Karakorpi graduated from the Sibelius Academy with a doctorate in music in 2016. She has supplemented her studies at the Edsberg Chamber Music School in Stockholm, the Accademia Internazionale Musicale di Roma in Rome, and the European Chamber Music Academy (ECMA).

She has achieved success in competitions, including placing in the 1997 Maj Lind Piano Competition and the 2006 Vanna Spadafora Piano Competition in Italy. Tiina Karakorpi plays regularly in various chamber music ensembles, such as the KAAÅS Trio (Annemarie Åström, violin, and Ulla Lampela, cello), a violin-piano duo with violinist Mirka Malmi, and a piano duo with her sister Salla Karakorpi called Karaa korville! Karakorpi served as artistic director of the Nurmijärvi Music Days from 2002 to 2012. She is a piano lecturer at the Espoo Music Institute.