Paavo Järvi

Born on December 30, 1962, in Tallinn, Estonia, Paavo Järvi is the elder son of conductor Neeme Järvi. He launched his musical training at the Tallinn School of Music, focusing on conducting and percussion, before the family relocated to the United States when he turned seventeen. There he enrolled at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, studying conducting with Otto-Werner Mueller and Max Rudolf, and later worked with Leonard Bernstein at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute. Early guest appearances soon followed with the New York Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, and Berlin Philharmonic, among others, where his interpretive command and ability to elicit strong results from varied ensembles quickly overshadowed any initial advantage of his surname. Appointments as principal guest conductor with the Stockholm Philharmonic and the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra further solidified his reputation through both concerts and recordings that drew widespread international acclaim.

In September 2001 Järvi succeeded Jesús López-Cobos as the twelfth music director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. His first Telarc release in the post featured the orchestra in Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique and the Love Music from Roméo et Juliet. Longstanding ties to the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra produced several recordings, among them an album of Arvo Pärt’s orchestral music and Sibelius’s only opera, The Maiden in the Tower; a 2004 Grammy Award recognized the ensemble’s account of Sibelius’s cantatas under his direction. He has also promoted the music of fellow Estonian composers Erkki-Sven Tüür, Udo Kasemets, and Eduard Tubin alongside the more widely known Pärt.

Since 2004 Järvi has served as artistic director of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen. From 2006 to 2014 he held the principal conductor post with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, after which he was named its conductor laureate. He led the Orchestre de Paris as music director from 2010 to 2016, remained with the Cincinnati Symphony until 2011, when the orchestra named him music director laureate, and that same year established the Estonian Festival Orchestra as the resident ensemble of the Pärnu Music Festival, continuing as its artistic director. In 2012 he received the title Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Two years later he was awarded the Sibelius Prize and designated Artist of the Year by Diapason and Gramophone magazines. He served as chief conductor of the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo from 2015 to 2022, thereafter becoming its honorary conductor, and in 2019 assumed the chief conductorship of the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, a contract later extended through the 2028–2029 season.

A steady presence in the recording studio, Järvi has released accounts of orchestral works by Stenhammar, Sibelius’s Kullervo and Lemminkäinen Suite, music by Bernstein, cello concertos performed by Truls Mørk, and orchestral scores of Lepo Sumera. During 2024 he issued multiple albums, including Schoenberg and Fauré’s Pelléas et Mélisande with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Jüri Reinvere’s Ship of Fools with the Estonian Festival Orchestra, and both Mendelssohn symphonies and Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9 with the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra.