Kreeta-Julia Heikkilä
Violinist/Finland
“Kreeta-Julia Heikkilä, through means of her technical ability and passionate playing, proved why she is one of the most interesting Finnish violinists of our time.” — HBL (6/2014)
Kreeta-Julia Heikkilä served as a concertmaster of the Danish National Chamber Orchestra and Vaasa City Orchestra and the Oulu Symphony Orchestra in Finland. Besides an extensive solo career, Heikkilä is also a recognized leader in Europe, holding engagements as a concertmaster in orchestras such as the London BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Arctic Philharmonic, the Norwegian National Opera and the Malmö Opera orchestras, the Copenhagen Philharmonic, the Stavanger and Trondheim Symphony orchestras, etc. As a guest concertmaster and a leader of the London BBC Symphony Orchestra, she was the featured soloist on Rufus Wainwright: Prima Donna and Take All My Loves – 9 Shakespeare Sonnets, with the London BBC Symphony Orchestra, released on Deutsche Grammophon in 2015. Heikkilä has soloed with orchestras and given recitals as soloist and chamber musician across Europe, South-Korea, the USA, and Russia. In recent years, she has performed at many leading festivals: the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival, KuruFest, the Helsinki Festival, the Riga New Music Festival, the Classica NordicBaltic Conference in Latvia, the Ecuentro de Musica de Santander in Spain, the iPalpiti Festival of International Laureates in Los Angeles, the Gumi International Music Festival in Korea, the Music Alp Music Weeks in France, the Harmos Festival in Portugal and the Lake District Summer Music Festival in the UK. Kreeta-Julia is also the artistic director, founder and a violinist of the TEOS – Finnish Chamber Music Series in Helsinki and is currently a violinist in the Copenhagen-based Trio Nord along with iPalpiti alumnus cellist Jacob Shaw. The summer of 2017 inaugurates the 1st Helsinki Chamber Music Festival of which she is an artistic director and violinist. A prizewinner at numerous national and international competitions, including the prestigious Pro Musica and Nordea Awards, Kreeta-Julia graduated with distinction from the London Royal College of Music in 2012 and from the Sibelius Academy in 2015, where she studied under Jan Repko, Tuomas Haapanen, Mi-Kuyng Lee and Päivyt Meller. Heikkilä plays an Andrea Guarneri (1680), kindly on loan from The Finnish Cultural Foundation.