Aliisa Neige Barrière was born in 1995 into a French-Finnish family in Paris, where her musical studies have included violin, piano, chamber music and choral as well as orchestral conducting. A passionate chamber musician, Barrière has participated in a great variety of projects and masterclasses throughout Europe and the United States, and is interested in performing all music from baroque to contemporary.

 

VIOLINIST

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In 2013, Barrière completed her studies in Paris, in the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional with Suzanne Gessner (violin) and Judy Chin (piano), where she received her Performance Diploma (Prix de Perfectionnement).

 

Barrière’s studies first brought her to New York and Mannes College of Music in 2011–2012, in the Preparatory Division with Renee Jolles (violin) and orchestral conducting (Scott Jackson Wiley). As a winner of the Concerto Competition she played the first movement of the Khachaturian Violin Concerto with the Mannes Philharmonic led by Eric Dudley at Symphony Space. She also was a member of the Face the Music ensemble (Jennifer Undercofler), dedicated to music by living composers.

 

In 2013, after winning the New School Competition, Barrière was awarded a full scholarship for four years of studies at Mannes College of Music where she started her Bachelor’s Degree, studying with Lewis Kaplan and Laurie Smukler (violin), Michael Adelson and David Hayes (conducting) and was part of the Mannes Baroque Players led by Nancy Wilson.

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She then decided to pursue her violin studies in Oslo from 2015 with Peter Herresthal at the Norwegian Academy of Music, where she finished her Bachelor’s Degree in 2017. After winning a concerto competition, she appeared as a soloist in Vivaldi's Spring and Winter, connected by her own cadenza (cond. Øyvind Bjorå). She obtained her Master’s Degree from the same institution in 2019, her diploma-work consisting in own one-day

festival, conceived as an arena for experimenting with the concert format and presenting music ranging from the Renaissance to our time, including several world premieres.

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CONDUCTOR

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In 2018, Aliisa Neige Barrière resumed her conducting studies and attended a masterclass with Prof. Atso Almila (Sibelius Academy) and Luke Dollman (Univ. of Adelaide) in Zlín, Czech Republic where she got to lead the Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic Orchestra in a program ranging from Mozart to Stravinsky. She then joined the Panula Academy in the year 2018-2019 for regular guidance from Jorma Panula. She has since regularly worked as an assistant to conductors such as Esa-Pekka Salonen, Susanna Mälkki, Sakari Oramo, Pekka Kuusisto and Ernest Martínez-Izquierdo.

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In January of 2023, Barrière graduated from the Master's program of the orchestral conducting department of the Sibelius Academy (Helsinki) as a student of Sakari Oramo.

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In 2021-2023 she served as the assistant conductor to Dalia Stasevska with Sinfonia Lahti, and held the position of Young Conductor in Residence with the Århus Sinfonietta in Denmark, in 2021-2023.

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In 2023, she was awarded the Young Artist Award at the Mikkeli Music Festival.

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In 2024, Barrière will be Artist in residence of the Turku Music Festival, curating a series of concert ranging from chamber music to orchestral music around the concept of uchrony or alternate history. 

 

OTHER ACTIVITIES

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Both as a conductor and violinist Barrière is a keen advocate of contemporary composers, believing new voices and point of views are more crucial than ever to open dialogues. More generally, she is interested in bringing dramaturgy into the concert halls and strives to bring more experimenting to the way we program and present music.

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Barrière is a founding member of many ensembles and groups, such as the Hindsgavl Nordic Chamber Orchestra in Denmark, the Norwegian contemporary music ensembles Ensemble Temporum and Ensemble +47, and the string quartet Nordlyd, which ha toured extensively throughout the Nordic countries. Since 2018, Barrière is also the violinist of ÄÄNI-kollektiivi, an ensemble based in Helsinki and dedicated to bringing contemporary music and art to broader audiences.

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The concern of communicating music in new ways is at the heart of all the projects she is planning and creating, the latest being a new one-day festival, Majakka (Lighthouse), which will take place in Helsinki starting from May 2022.

 

As a violinist, her first CD, Ekstasis, was released in 2019 by the label Cyprès, around the solo works of Kaija Saariaho and Jean-Baptiste Barrière, in collaboration with flutist Camilla Hoitenga and soprano Raphaële Kennedy.

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