Biography Marius Stravinsky
Marius Stravinsky is Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Karelia Philharmonic Orchestra (KPO). This State Symphony Orchestra performs more than 40 concerts per season in the home concert hall in Petrozavodsk and visits St Petersburg including the Orchestra's 75th anniversary concert in March 2009. Recently the Orchestra has been resident in the ballet festival at Savonlinna (August 2008), given concerts in Finland and Norway (November 2008, June 2009), a three week tour of France and Switzerland (February 2009) and a seven city tour of Finland in November 2009.
Born in Kazakhstan, Stravinsky started playing the violin when he was four, starting at the Moscow Central Music School (affiliated to the Tchaikovsky Conservatoire) at six. He continued his studies at the Yehudi Menuhin School in England aged ten and three years later became the first former Soviet student to secure a scholarship in music at Eton College. He is a graduate of the Royal Academy of Music in London.
From the age of fourteen, Stravinsky made concert appearances at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, the Spoleto Festival and the Gidon Kremer Lockenhaus Festival.