Obituary, Jaakko Kuusisto (1974-2022)

The Finnish violinist, conductor, composer and politician Jaakko Kuusisto has died at the age of 48.

Born into an enviably musical family – the son and grandson of accomplished composers, and brother of fellow violinist Pekka, with whom he worked on many occasions throughout his career – Kuusisto began learning the violin early in his childhood, studying first in his home country and later in the USA. The two brothers would begin to develop distinctive approaches to music-making at this time – their mutual teacher Miriam Fried broadly contrasted them as tending towards the instinctive (Pekka) versus the intellectual (Jaakko).

After a strong performance in the 1997 Queen Elisabeth Competition, Kuusisto became leader of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra based in southern Finland, under Osmo Vänskä – a post he would hold for a decade and a half and which also saw him appear as soloist on numerous recordings. At the same time he was developing his parallel conducting career, initially with the Oulu Symphony Orchestra in the north of the country from 2005 to 2009, and later with the Kuopio City Orchestra in the east.

Perhaps in part a vindication of Miriam Fried’s comment on his relatively intellectual, explorative nature, Kuusisto also pursued a career as a composer, with a wide-ranging output of orchestral and chamber works as well as several operas which have yet to be recorded – most recently 2015’s Elämälle (“Life”) about the Finnish Romantic composer Oskar Merikanto, and 2018’s Jää (“Ice”), based on Ulla-Lena Lundberg’s novel of the same name set on the Åland Islands.

Kuusisto was diagnosed with a brain tumour in the summer of 2020 and underwent surgery later that year. He continued to be active in the musical sphere and indeed beyond; in 2021 he was elected to Oulu city council as a council member for the Green League party. He is survived by Pekka, his wife Maija, and his two children.

Jaakko Kuusisto - a selected discography