Violinist Ilkka Talvi made his début as a soloist at the age of ten in his native country of Finland. Initially self-taught, he later studied with Arno Granroth, a pupil of Jacques Thibaud, at the Sibelius Academy. After winning the Scandinavian Young Artist Competition, he furthered his studies in Paris, Vienna and the United States. His teachers included Ivan Galamian at the Curtis Institute of Music and the eminent violinist Jascha Heifetz at the University of Southern California. Ilkka Talvi was on the faculty of the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki and the Conservatory of Music in Pori, Finland. Before immigrating to the United States he was concertmaster of the Malmö Symphony Orchestra in Sweden. Since 1999, he has been the concertmaster of the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center in New York. He is well known to Seattle audiences for his rôle as concertmaster of Seattle Symphony and Seattle Opera. On occasion he is heard in performance with his wife, violinist Marjorie Kransberg-Talvi.
