Leif Segerstam was born in 1944 in Vasa, educated at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki and Juilliard in New York.
During his career, he worked both in Finland and abroad, partly as chief conductor at the Helsinki City Orchestra and equivalent positions at the Danish, Finnish, and Austrian radio symphony orchestras.
Honorary Conductor in Malmö
Since the 1970s, Segerstam also worked at opera houses around the world, including La Scala in Milan, Deutsche Oper in Berlin, and the Metropolitan in New York.
Segerstam came to Sweden for the first time in 1968, when he was engaged as a conductor at the Royal Opera. He was appointed chief conductor at the Malmö Opera in 2012-2015, where he staged Wagner's "Parsifal" and Massenet's "Manon", among other things. He was later appointed honorary conductor and continued to conduct the opera orchestra's concerts on several occasions.
He was also active as a composer and is said to have composed over 350 symphonies, 30 string quartets, 11 violin concertos, and 4 piano concertos, according to Hufvudstadsbladet.
"Sticks in the wheels"
Privately, he was married several times, had several extramarital children, and was known for his sexist language, which was highlighted late in life when he stated in an interview that a former female student "lacked balls".
In an interview with Hufvudstadsbladet ahead of his 80th birthday in March this year, the "eccentric" conductor, as foreign media call him, said that the assignments from, among others, the Sibelius Academy, decreased during the last years.
I've had sticks in the wheels all my life, he said then.
Leif Segerstam turned 80 and passed away after a short illness, according to Yle.
