The Estonian violinist Mihkel Kerem (born in Tallinn in 1981) is familiar as a performer in Britain as well as at home. He is also a prolific composer, with over one hundred works to his credit, three symphonies among them.

The three-movement Third Symphony (2003) and the Lamento for viola and strings (2008–9) lie downstream from Shostakovich and Boris Tishchenko, and were inspired by the idea of the struggle of the individual voice against oppressive ideology.

The String Sextet (2004), cast in a single half-hour span, has its musical starting-point and initial poetic impulse in Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht, and was intended to reflect a sleepless night before the action of the Dehmel poem that inspired Schoenberg; it also manifests the polyphonic lyricism of Strauss’ Metamorphosen.

Mikk Murdvee began his musical education at age six in the Music High School in Tallinn; thereafter he studied at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre and the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki: violin with Mari Tampere-Bezrodny and conducting with Leif Segerstam and Jorma Panula. He is a frequent visitor to a number of professional Finnish and Estonian orchestras and in London has conducted the South Bank Sinfonia and Royal College of Music Symphony Orchestra.

Since January 2011 he has been assistant to Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia Orchestra on several projects. He also continues his career as a violinist and violist, both as soloist, chamber musician and orchestral leader. He has recorded the three violin sonatas with piano and the solo-violin sonata of Mihkel Kerem with Sten Lassmann on Toccata Classics (TOCC 1040).