Miriam Helms Ålien

“I love the feeling of getting to know new things“

Experiencing, learning and getting to know new things – Miriam Helms Ålien’s plan is to understand as much as it is possible to understand of music, people and life. Her own life began in the far north of Norway, so when, at the age of six and a half, she chose to follow in the footsteps of a similarly aged literary heroine and play the violin, by the time she was 12 this meant flying thousands of kilometres to Oslo for violin lessons. Before this point, however, several years spent with her parents in the Philippines provided her with formative experiences of both poverty and life’s joy. Music moves and carries her, music grounds her. So do her friends: people are important to her, not least because – as in Kronberg – you can follow them and learn from their experiences.

Praised for her "extraordinary musicality and "maturity beyond her years", Miriam Helms Ålien is one of the most exciting young artists to emerge from Norway in recent years. Born in Alta in Northern-Norway, she started playing the violin when she was 6 ½ years old and has, since her solo debut at 8 years old, been a soloist with many of the Norwegian orchestras as well as with orchestras in Germany, Israel, Denmark, Italy, the Czech Republic and Russia. Recent seasons have included performances with orchestras like the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, Bergen Philharmonic, Trondheim Symphony Orchestra, Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Arctic Philharmonic, Israeli Netanya Orchestra, Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic Orchestra Pardubice, Tromsø Symphony Orchestra, Arkhangelsk Chamber Orchestra and the Oslo Camerata.

A dedicated and passionate chamber musician, Miriam has been invited to play at numerous festivals, including the Bergen International Festival, Kissinger Sommer, Beethoven-Woche Bonn, Verbier Festival & Academy, Kronberg “Chamber Music Connects the World” Festival and OCM Prussia Cove, as well as the International Chamber Music Festivals in Oslo, Trondheim and Risør. Here she has worked closely with distinguished artists like András Schiff, Gidon Kremer, Tabea Zimmermann, Radovan Vlatković and Steven Isserlis.

Since 2020 she is also the founder and artistic director of her own international chamber music festival "FESTIVALTA" in her home town, likely making it the world's northern-most festival of its kind.

Miriam has been invited to perform in famous halls like Wigmore Hall, KKL Luzern and the Norwegian Opera House, and she is also a regular performer on international TV and radio broadcasts.

In 2012 Miriam won the prestigious Princess Astrid Music Price. Previously she won first prize at the Kocian Violin Competition in the Czech Republic, the overall winner and recipient of the the Grand Prix Laureate, EMCY Prize and Bärenreiter Prize. She was awarded the Sparre Olsen Prize and Norwegian Music Publisher's Prize of Honour in 2009, and was named Norway’s "Young Musician of the Year 2010". She was also chosen by the Oslo Philharmonic as Norway’s representative for the Nordic Soloist Prize.
She studied at the Hochschule für Musik in Munich, the HfM "Hanns Eisler" in Berlin and at the Barratt Due Institute for Music in Oslo. Her teachers include Ulf Wallin, Stephan Barratt-Due, Alf Richard and Henning Kraggerud. Further inspiration has come from masterclasses with artists such as Sir Simon Rattle, Ida Haendel, Shmuel Ashkenasi, Christoph Eschenbach, Gábor Takács-Nagy, Miriam Fried and Mauricio Fuks.

Miriam plays on a 1780 Guadagnini violin, generously on loan to her from a private donor.

From 2016 to 2019, Miriam studied at Kronberg Academy where she studied with Prof. Ana Chumachenco and Prof. Tabea Zimmermann. These studies were funded by the Artmann/Rath Scholarship.