Heidi Sundblad-Halme

Heidi Gabriella Wilhelmina Sundblad-Halme (25 September 1903 – 30 April 1973) was a Finnish composer and conductor who founded the Helsinki Women’s Orchestra and conducted it for 30 years. Career Sundblad-Halme was born in Jakobstad, where her father Henrik Sundblad was a composer, cantor, and organist. She married Deputy Judge Helge Halme in 1930. The couple traveled to the Soviet Union and several Baltic countries, and published accounts of their travels in Finnish newspapers. Sundblad-Halme directed a private music school until they moved to Helsinki in 1933. Their son Hannu was born in 1935. Sundblad-Halme studied music at the Helsinki Conservatory (later the Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki) from 1927 to 1933, then privately in Berlin and Lund, Switzerland. Her teachers included Dean Dixon, Leo Funtek, Clemens Krauss, Erkki Melartin, Väinö Raitio, and Sulho Ranta. During the mid-1930s, she conducted orchestra concerts in the Finnish cities of Turku, Tampere, and Helsinki. Conductor Georg Schnéevoigt reportedly suggested that Sundblad-Halme start an all-female orchestra so the men in regular orchestras wouldn’t be distracted by a female conductor. Orchest