JULIA OF CRETE
WEAK
Photo: Caroline Bittencourt
BIOGRAPHY
Heikkilä has performed as a chamber musician and soloist at several international festivals in European countries, South Korea, America and Russia. In addition to numerous Finnish orchestras, he has played in e.g. As a soloist with the Danish Radio Chamber Orchestra, the iPalpiti Chamber Orchestra and the Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra. In 2022, Heikkilä will debut at the Helsinki Music Hall as a soloist of the European Union Youth Orchestra.
Heikkilä has worked as a permanent concertmaster in the Vaasa City Orchestra (2012), the Danish Radio Chamber Orchestra (2013-) and the Oulu Sinfonia (2015). In addition to this, he has worked as a guest concert master in Finland and the Nordic countries. Heikkilä also plays as guest soloist and concertmaster on Rufus Wainwright's albums Prima Donna and Take All My Loves – 9 Shakespeare Sonnets published by Deutsche Grammophon with the London BBC Symphony Orchestra.
In addition to his concert activities, he strives to develop the culture of classical music by acting as the artistic director and violinist of the Helsinki Chamber Music Festival and the Minimalia concert series, which he founded. As a member of the piano trio Teos, with cellist Jaani Helander and pianist Jaan Ots, he has been actively giving concerts since 2017.
Since 2019, Kreeta-Julia has worked as a violin lecturer at the Espoo Academy of Music and as a chamber music and violin lesson teacher at the Sibelius Academy. As a passionate teacher, he also teaches violin master classes in the summer, e.g. In Raudaskyla and Joutseno.
Heikkilä started playing the violin at the age of 5 as a student of Geza Szilvay at the Eastern Helsinki Music Academy. Since then, he has studied at the Sibelius Academy under Tuomas Haapanen, Mi-kyung Lee, Päivyt Meller and Tero Latvala, at the London Royal College of Music in Jan Repko's class, and chamber music at the Royal Danish Academy of Music under Tim Frederiksen as a member of Trio Nord.
Heikkilä uses an Andrea Guarneri violin from 1680 owned by the Finnish Cultural Fund.