JOHANNA ELINA SULKUNEN

Johanna Sulkunen is a Finnish experimental vocalist, composer and improviser based in Copenhagen. She has released five critically acclaimed albums. Sulkunen's work spans from free improvisation, electronic music, and avant-garde. In 2018 she launched the experimental solo project Sonority, and ever since the symbiosis of vocals and electronics has been in the center of her career.

She is a frequent collaborator with other artists as well and has performed with iconic jazz & improv and electronic musicians such as Tomasz Stanko, Bjørn Svin, Blixa Bargeld, Michiyo Yagi, Burkhard Beins, Lotte Anker, Lisa Ullén, Axel Dörner, Mike Sheridan, and many others. Likewise, she has worked with various interdisciplinary projects, collaborating with dancers, poets, and filmmakers. In 2023 - 2025 she performed with Blixa Bargeld and IKI in Hotel Pro Forma’s acclaimed production Flammenwerfer with Blixa Bargelds and Niels Frahms music that won the prize "Music Theatre of the Year" at the Årets Reumert awards in Denmark 2025. Johanna Sulkunen has been based in Denmark since 2009 and is a very active part of Copenhagen’s vibrant music scene, often taking place in new collaborations and improvised sessions but also appearing at some of Denmark’s major festivals, such as Roskilde Festival, SPOT, Copenhagen Jazz Festival and more. Since 2009 she has been part of the acclaimed Scandinavian vocal group IKI whose debut album from 2011 received a Danish Music Award for Jazz vocal album of the year. The same year, she also released her debut album as a solo artist, the critically acclaimed “Our Garden” (released as Johanna Elina) that introduced her as an exciting and adventurous vocalist and composer in her own right. In 2016 the album was followed up by the equally impressive “Belonging”, which was nominated for a Danish Music Award for the best vocal jazz album. In 2018 she returned as a solo performer under the new moniker Sonority, releasing the album “Koan”, the first part of a planned trilogy, where the second instalment is the 2021-release “Terra”.

While still containing elements of jazz and improvisation, the Sonority project sees Sulkunen taking her voice into new sonic territory, working in the direction of electroacoustic composition, experimental ambient and field recordings. Across the SONORITY trilogy, Sulkunen investigates the voice from different perspectives. KOAN explores perception, language, and meditative listening through manipulated vocals and electroacoustic textures. TERRA, selected among A Closer Listen’s Top 10 Experimental Albums of 2021, expands the inquiry toward ecology, landscape, and the interconnectedness of natural systems, combining field recordings, ambient composition, and experimental vocal techniques.Sonority is an ongoing research about resonance of the human body- voice and electronics.

Her latest full length solo album, COEXISTENCE (2024), turns the act of listening outward. Inspired by her background in anthropology, Sulkunen developed the album through conversations with people whose voices are often marginalized, including refugees and unhoused individuals. Beginning with the question “What would you say if the whole world was listening?”, these encounters became both conceptual foundation and musical material. Fragments of voices are woven into layered compositions exploring themes of home and displacement, borders and belonging, dreams, memory and shared humanity.

In her Sonority concerts she performs often as SOLO on stage as a hybrid between visual artist Tapani Toivanen creating immersive concert experiences. With Sonority she has toured in throughout European countries as well as in Japan and Korea. Johanna Sulkunen holds a Degree in Jazz Vocals from Rotterdam Jazz Academy, where she graduated with a prize 'very talented alumni'. She graduated from the Post Graduate 'Soloist' line (performance) at the Rhythmic Music Conservatory of Copenhagen in 2017. She also holds a Masters’s degree in Anthropology / Comparative Religion from the University of Helsinki.

“A unique and uncompromising voice — one of the most important figures in Scandinavian experimental improvisation today.”

“"Sulkunen's voice is an instrument of extraordinary range and intelligence. She operates in a world entirely her own."”

“Flammenwerfer was one of the most intense performance experiences of the year. IKI and Blixa Bargeld together: extraordinary.”

“"Although highly original and astonishingly innovative, there's also a quietly classical sense of respect and reverence to Sulkunen's ambient masterpiece. I can touch and feel the echoes of nature's elements re-emerging from a long distant past, living and breathing peacefully within the composer's borderless music.”

“SAID ABOUT 'KOAN' : "Very fascinating album from an artist who dares to take a step outside of the established." Lira Musikmagazine. Se "With its finely-detailed solo composition, »KOAN« is closer to contemporary, complex layered vocal and sound worlds by Holly Herndon and her colleagues than to everything else that is heard in this country from the house of ILK and from the Copenhagen (jazz) scene”

“Danish based, Finnish singer Johanna Elina Sulkunen, is one of a kind: a songwriter and singer that writes and performs her melancholic, eccentric, and in many ways quite simple songs. Music is almost dramatic, very style conscious, and implemented in avant-gardic way”

“"Johanna Elina continues to cultivate her style." – Helsingin Sanomat ★★★★ "Denmark based singer/songwriter with a jazz background is even more fearless and abstract than before" […] " in the outstanding expression of the voice, that plays along with a small group- keys, guitar and drums – that has played and produced in many layers.”

“" Her new found language and manipulated voice are used as a provocative Kōan. Forcing the listener to adopt a fresh, a deep listening-meditative approach, sometimes even dream state of mind to language and voices."”

“"Hier gilt es Gedanken und musikalische Ideen zu entdecken, die aus einem sehr individuell gestalteten, oft aber auch naturbelassenen Gartenreich stammen. Fantastisch!"”

“" ... Johanna Elina - whose voice one immediately falls in love with - does not think in categories. She just writes magnificient somber tunes. She tells her own stories, accompanied by her international top class band that knows exactly what kind of sound the lady behind the mic needs."”