He has studied at the University of Music Franz Liszt Weimar and currently studies in the Master’s programme of the Conservatorium van Amsterdam and the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague. He has taken part in masterclasses with Paavo Järvi, Riccardo Muti and others, as well as workshops in modern music with Christof Löser, Steffen Schleiermacher and others. In 2021–23 he held a conducting fellowship in the German Music Council’s Forum Dirigieren. He has conducted many renowned ensembles.

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Estonian Grammy Award-winning conductor Paavo Järvi is widely recognised as one of today’s most eminent conductors, enjoying close partnerships with the finest orchestras around the world. He serves as Music Director of the  Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich , Artistic Director of The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and as both the founder and Artistic Director of the Estonian Festival Orchestra.

Highlights of Paavo Järvi’s seventh season as Music Director of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich
include the continuation of their Mahler Symphony Cycle and a tribute to Swiss-French composer Arthur Honneger on the 70th anniversary of his death. Additional spotlights include performances with season focus artists, cellist Sol Gabetta and pianist Kirill Gerstein, as well as a year-long exploration of the music of Thomas Adés, this year’s Creative Chair. Alpha Classics releases Mahler Symphony No.1 in Autumn 2025, coinciding with the start of a three-year guest residency at the Festspielhaus
Baden-Baden and a Mahler tour which takes them to the Vienna Musikverein, Cologne and Paris Philharmonies. Additional touring includes appearances at the Gstaad Menhunin Festival and George Enescu Festival in Bucharest, a guest performance at La Scala, Milan and an extensive tour to Japan and South Korea in May 2026.

Now in his third decade as Artistic Director of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Paavo Järvi has performed and recorded benchmark performances of the complete orchestral works of Beethoven, Schumann and Brahms on the RCA Red Seal label. Highlights in the 2025/26 season include the final release of the London Haydn symphonies as well as recordings and performances of Schubert’s symphonies at home in Bremen and on tour across Europe.

Each season concludes with two weeks of performances and conducting masterclasses at the Pärnu Music Festival in Estonia, which Paavo Järvi founded in 2011. The success of both the Festival and its resident ensemble – the Estonian Festival Orchestra – has led to high-profile recordings and tours throughout Europe and Asia. In September 2025 Alpha Classics releases the orchestra’s sixth album entitled Credo, which pays tribute to Arvo Pärt on his 90 th birthday. Paavo Järvi then leads the Estonian Festival Orchestra in performances of Pärt’s iconic music, on tour to Tallinn, Zürich, Vienna,
and Hamburg, culminating with the orchestra’s USA debut at New York’s Carnegie Hall.

In addition to his permanent positions, Järvi is much in demand as a guest conductor, regularly appearing with the Berliner Philharmoniker, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, London Philharmonic and New York Philharmonic. This season, Järvi also conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Toronto Symphony, Gewandhaus Orchester, NDR Elbphilharmonie, Philharmonia Orchestra, Luxembourg Philharmonic and Verbier Festival Orchestra. He also continues to enjoy close relationships with many of the orchestras of which he was previously Music Director, including Orchestre de Paris, Frankfurt Radio Symphony and NHK Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo. 

Recent accolades include Germany’s 2025 Opus Klassik “Composer of the Year” Award for the Estonian Festival Orchestra’s recording of Jüri Reinvere’s Ship of Fools and an International Classical Music Award for the recording of Bruckner Symphony No.8 with Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, both on Alpha Classics. With The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Paavo Järvi won the 2024 Opus Klassik and 2023 Gramophone “Orchestra of the Year “award, as well as the 2019 Rheingau Music Prize and Opus Klassik “Conductor of the Year”. Other prizes and honours include a Grammy Award for his recording of Sibelius’ Cantatas with the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, Commandeur de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres awarded by the French Ministry of Culture. In 2015, Paavo Järvi
was also presented with the Sibelius Medal in recognition of his work in bringing the Finnish composer’s music to a wider public and, in 2012, he received the Hindemith Prize for Art and Humanity. As a dedicated supporter of Estonian culture, Paavo Järvi was awarded the Order of the White Star by the President of Estonia in 2013.

www.paavojarvi.com

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From his native country, these include an honorary doctorate from the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre and the Order of the National Coat of Arms from the former President of the Republic of Estonia, Lennart Meri. The Mayor of Tallinn presented Maestro Järvi with the city’s first-ever ceremonial sash and coat of arms insignia, and he has been named one of the “Estonians of the Century.”
Neeme Järvi holds an honorary doctorate of Humane Letters from Detroit’s Wayne State University and the University of Michigan, as well as honorary doctorates from the University of Aberdeen and the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. He has also been appointed Commander of the North Star Order by King Karl XVI Gustaf of Sweden.

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Kristjan Järvi (conductor, producer, arranger) lives and breathes music, using its power to create spaces in which anything is possible. Kristjan Järvi pursues his pioneering ideas as a conductor, producer, composer and arranger. Embracing everything with creative entrepreneurship, he runs his own production company Sunbeam Productions.

Kristjan Järvi has earned a reputation as one of the canniest, and most innovative, programmers on the classical scene’ (Reuters). As a conductor, he is at home on the big international stages, directing great classics from Wagner to Tchaikovsky and from Steve Reich to Radiohead as well as his original productions without any genre boundaries.

Kristjan Järvi developed his own unique sound with several groups he is leading, from his New York based, classical-hip-hop-jazz group Absolute Ensemble, Baltic Sea Philharmonic, BSP-Experience and his newly founded Nordic Pulse Orchestra. He has established the Estonian Film Orchestra, which regularly records soundtracks for major international films and series in his state-of-the-art studios, owing to its exceptional sonic qualities. Kristjan shapes his artistic life and takes expression to the next level with his team of Sunbeam Productions, with whom he creates a new paradigm for multi-sensory performance Xperiences. One of the latest productions is the Original Babylon Berlin Live Show, currently available on ARD streaming platform ARD Mediathek.

In 2020 Kristjan founded nEscapes Records. Besides online music distribution it offers its own unique ‘nEscapes Lounges’ as a new listening format. His latest and biggest endeavour is the launch and development of ‘ESTONIIA Muse’, a digital AI muse that is created to shape your personal surroundings and make sense of things for you.

Besides his own productions, due to his unique sounds and approaches with his bands, Kristjan Järvi collaborates internationally with outstanding artists like director Tom Tykwer (for the soundtrack of Babylon Berlin) and recording artists like MUM, Bryce Dessner (The National), Hauschka, Robot Koch and Max Richter and is staring in the Bastille Re-Orchestrated documentary on Amazon Prime at the moment.

Kristjan live orchestrated the touring project of Brian Eno, called ‘SHIPS’, starring Brian Eno, BSP, Peter Chilvers, Peter Serafinowicz, Leo Abrahams and Melanie Pappenheim. He is the artistic partner of the Metal for Orchestra project ‘Bright&Black’ with Eicca Toppinen.

Kristjan is exclusively signed as a composer and producer with BMG Music. His latest album is called Nordic Escapes.

Kristjan holds the position of Honorary Consul of South Korea in Estonia.

Born in Estonia, Kristjan Järvi emigrated to the United States as a child and grew up in New York City. Kristjan comes from a family of great conductors. His father Neeme and his elder brother Paavo both conduct the greatest orchestras in the world. In 2015 Kristjan relocated his center of life from the USA back to the capital of Estonia, Tallinn.

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Already well established as a soloist at home in Estonia, Hans Christian Aavik
performed Bruch’s violin concerto with the Estonian Festival Orchestra and Paavo Järvi
at the 2024 Pärnu Music Festival. In 2024 he also curated his own concert series with
the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, revolving around Mozart’s five violin concertos, and
performed Beethoven’s violin concerto with the Estonian National
SymphonyOrchestra under Olari Elts. Recent international engagements have included
chamber music performances at the Wigmore Hall, Köln Deutschlandfunk
Kammermusiksaal and Kölner Philarmonie.

Hans Christian Aavik returns to the Pärnu Music Festival in July 2025 as soloist in Arvo
Pärt’s Tabula Rasa and joins Paavo Järvi and the Estonian Festival Orchestra for further celebrations of the composer’s 90th birthday this autumn, appearing as soloist alongside Midori at the Vienna Konzerthaus, Zürich Tonhalle, Hamburg Elbphilharmonie and New York Carnegie Hall. Additional highlights of the 2024 / 25 season include performances of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante with Tabea Zimmermann and Ensemble Resonanz; Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 with the Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra and Julian Rachlin; Erkki-Sven Tüür’s second violin concerto with the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn and Risto Joost; the world premiere of Tõnu Kõrvits’ double concerto for violin and piano with Karolina Aavik and the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra; and an invitation by Christian Macelaru to perform all three Enescu violin sontatas at the 2025 George Enescu Festival.

Hans Christian Aavik will be Young Artist in Focus with the renowned WKO (Württembergisches Kammerorchester Heilbronn) starting from season 25/26. This partnership will last for two years and includes symphonic concerts, lead & play projects, an education program and chamber music.

Following the success at the 2022 Carl Nielsen Competition – including Prize for Best Interpretation and the Odense Symphony Orchestra Prize – Hans Christian has recorded his first orchestral album with conductor Gemma New, featuring the Bruch violin concerto and Erkki-Sven Tüür’s second violin concerto, to be released on Orchid Classics in 2025. He also recently appeared in Deutsche Grammophon’s new landmark series “Rising Stars” on STAGE+ and, together with pianist Karolina Aavik, recorded three singles on the label’s “Musical Moments” series; the 3rd movement of the Enescu Violin Sonata no. 3; Morten Lauridsen’s O Magnum Mysterium; and Eduard Oja’s Aeital’s Suite III, The Dance of the Magazitly. His debut album “AETERNUS” with Karolina Aavik was recorded at the Arvo Pärt Centre in 2021 and featured works by Bach, Schubert and Pärt.

​Born in Tallinn in 1998, Hans Christian started his violin studies at the age of five. In 2017 he moved to Germany to study at the Frankfurt Music Academy of Music and Arts under the tutelage of Prof. Erik Schumann and chamber music with Prof. Angelika Merkle. He is currently studying at the Music and Arts Private University of Vienna with Julian Rachlin and Evgeny Sinaiski and at the Kronberg Academy with Erik Schumann. He has also received additional guidance from Iván Fischer, Christoph Eschenbach, Cristian Macelaru, Gidon Kremer, Kirill Gerstein, Augustin Hadelich, Steven Isserlis, Sophia Rahman, Sir András Schiff, Enrico Pace, Antoine Tamestit, Gary Hoffman, Kolja Blacher, Dénes Várjon and worked with conductors including Paavo Järvi, Neeme Järvi, Mihhail Gerts, Risto Joost, Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider and Oksana Lyniv.

​​Hans Christian Aavik is a scholarship holder of arteMusica Foundation, and was awarded both the 2022 Annual Award of the Cultural Endowment of Estonia and “Musician of the year” title by the Association of Estonian Professional Musicians. He performs on a Giovanni Paolo MAGGINI violin (ca 1610) and a bow made by Victor Fétique (ca 1930), generously on loan from the Estonian Foundation of Musical Instruments and the Sapožnin family.

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