Kristiina Rokashevich was born in 1990 in Tallinn, Estonia and began piano lessons in Tallinn Music High School with teachers Ell Saviauk and Marko Martin. Later she continued her education at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre with Marko Martin and prof. Ivari Ilja.
In September 2010 Kristiina moved to London to study with senior professor Joan Havill at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where she continued as a postgraduate. She has also worked with distinguished pianists and pedagogues such as Richard Goode, Dmitri Bashkirov, Angela Hewitt, Emanuel Krasovsky, Alon Goldstein and others. Kristiina has been kindly supported throughout her studies by Ethel Schwarz Memorial Bursary and the Phyllis Simons Award, Sergei Rachmaninov Award, Guildhall School Scholarship Trust, The Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Students’ Fund in the USA and Archimedes Foundation. In June 2015 and 2016 she received the Estonian Ministry of Culture Award.
Kristiina has won several prizes, recent ones include: I Prize of the Croydon Music Festival Piano Concerto competition; Guildhall School of Music and Drama Beethoven and Romantic Prize and top prize of the Beethoven competition organised by Beethoven Piano Society of Europe. In November 2014, she was amongst 6 finalists at the Estonian Piano Competition, where she performed the Piano Concerto no. 5 by Beethoven with Estonian National Symphony Orchestra and conductor Mihhail Gerts, broadcast by national classical radio ‘Klassikaraadio’. In July 2015 Kristiina won the 1st prize and the audience prize at the Amy Brant International Piano Competition. In spring 2016 Kristiina took part in a TV series “The stars of the Classics”, where she was one of the three finalists and won a special prize of the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra.
Active as a solo and chamber performer as well as a devoted harpsichordist Kristiina has performed in some of the most important venues in Estonia and United Kingdom, including Barbican Hall, St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Milton Court Concert Hall, LSO St. Luke’s, Birmingham Town Hall, Blackheath Halls, but also in Austria, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Latvia and Russia. She has performed as a soloist with Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, Pärnu City Symphony Orchestra, Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre and Guildhall School of Music & Drama symphony orchestras as well as Estonian National Symphony Orchestra and with conductors such as Christian Vasquez, Mihhail Gerts, Olari Elts, Risto Joost and others.
In February 2015, she was part of the Mozart 250 festival organised by the Classical Opera Company, where she performed composer’s early violin and keyboard sonatas on a copy of the two-manual 1636 A. Ruckers harpsichord from Cobbe Collection. Many of her performances have been broadcast live, including the Estonian Classical Radio, the Estonian Television and BBC Radio 3 programme ‘Total Immersion: Henri Dutilleux’. In addition, Kristiina takes great pleasure in introducing classical music to a broader audience and holds numerous salon evenings, concert lectures and special musical afternoons for children.
