Hilda Kunnola started playing the harp at the Turku Conservatory at the age of 9 and has spent her childhood in Kuusisto in the Turku archipelago. Having completed her studies with Päivi Severeide at the Sibelius Academy’s Youth Department in 2014-2019, she later on graduated from the Sibelius Academy with Severeide, with additional mentorship from Emmanuel Ceysson. She spent a year in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany during her Erasmus exchange program in 2021, where she studied with Kirsten Ecke at the Freiburg University of Music. Presently, she is enrolled in a master’s degree program with Stefania Saglietti at the Sibelius Academy.
As a chamber musician, Kunnola has been heard at, for example, the Kamarikesä festival in Helsinki, the Chamber Music Festival, the Toivakka Chamber Music Festival, and the Helsinki Harp Festival.
Her career as a freelancer has allowed Kunnola to play in many orchestras from a young age, such as the Oulu Symphony orchestra, the Tapiola Sinfonietta, the Tampere Symphony orchestra, the Lahti Sinfonia and the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra. In spring of 2022 she performed as a soloist with Lahti Symphony orchestra.
She has also debuted as a young soloist at the Radio Symphony Orchestra in the Spring of 2019 and during the same year, was chosen as one of the Pro-Musica Foundation’s Young Musicians of the Year.
In her free time she likes to organize concerts that combine different art fields. Through dance, visual arts, painting and music, her affinity to Nature is made vivid. She has received a grant from the Finnish Cultural Foundation that helped her with financing her Lyon and Healy style 23 harp.