Born in the US and raised in Finland, Elina Vähälä made her orchestral debut with the Lahti Symphony Orchestra at the age of twelve and was later chosen by Osmo Vänskä as the orchestra’s “Young Master Soloist”. She appears regularly with all the key Finnish orchestras as well being a guest of countless high-profile orchestras across the globe such as Houston Symphony, Vancouver Symphony, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, Beethoven Orchester Bonn, Dortmund Philharmoniker, Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, RTVE Spanish Radio Orchestra. She has toured extensively throughout the UK, Finland, Germany, China, Korea and South America.

In 2023, Elina assumed the position of Artistic Director of the Naantali Music Festival, having previously been the Artistic Co-Director of the Oulu Music Festival. Her chamber festival performances included the Chiemgauer Festival in Germany, Storioni Festival in Eindhoven, Netherlands, the Naantali, Kuhmo and Korsholm festivals in Finland, the Clandeboye Festival and the Seoul International Chamber Festival.

Elina has given world premieres of Aulis Sallinen's Chamber Concerto, Curtis Curtis-Smith's Double Concerto, Jaakko Kuusisto’s Violin Concerto, and Kalevi Aho’s Concerto no 2, all of which were written for her, as well as Jan Sandström’s Concerto. In addition, she gave the first Nordic performance of Corigliano’s Violin Concerto ‘The Red Violin’ and is one of the soloists of choice for this work. Befitting her Finnish roots, she has premiered many chambers works and violin concertos by Finnish composers, including those by Magnus Lindberg and Jaakko Kuusisto, and is one of very few to perform the Sibelius concerto in its early version.

In 2009 she launched the Violin Academy, a masterclass-based educational project for highly talented young Finnish violinists funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation. Previously professor at the Hochschule für Musik in Karlsruhe, Germany, she has been professor at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna since September 2019.

She performs with a Giovanni Battista Guadagnini violin made in 1780.