Pekka Kuusisto (born in 1976 in Espoo, Finland) is a Finnish classical violinist. Pekka Kuusisto began studying the violin at the age of three. His first violin teacher was Geza Szilvay at the East Helsinki Music Institute. In 1983 he enrolled in the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. He began to study there with Tuomas Haapanen in 1985. He studied with Miriam Fried and Paul Biss at the Indiana University School of Music from 1992 to 1996. In 1995 Pekka Kuusisto became the first Finn to win the International Jean Sibelius Violin Competition and was also awarded a special prize for the best performance of Jean Sibelius' violin concerto. He has won other prizes, has concertized widely and recorded works for the Ondine label. Pekka Kuusisto plays a Giovanni Battista Guadagnini violin (1752) lent by the Finnish Cultural Foundation. Kuusisto has performed with many European professional orchestras, but does his most significant orchestral appearances by playing mostly with well-known Finnish orchestras. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.