About Britta Virves
Britta Virves is a pianist and composer born in Saaremaa, Estonia who is currently based in Stockholm, Sweden. Her piano compositions are narratively clear and harmonically modern meditations on the wonder of nature, ecological webs of interconnectedness, and the people and places she calls home.
Britta was born April 24, 1991, and grew up in Saaremaa, the largest island in Estonia. She began playing classical piano when she was seven years old and was introduced to jazz and improvisation when she was fifteen. She continued her musical journey at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, and took a year off to study and live in Odense, Denmark. After that she moved to Sweden to study in Skurups Folkhögskola, a folk high school that attracts musicians from all over Europe. It would be a pivotal moment of growth in her education, where she would meet her future bandmates Jonas Bäckman and Jon Henriksson, who play drums and bass respectively in The Britta Virves Trio.
Britta now lives in Stockholm, Sweden, and has become an acclaimed pianist and sought-after sidewoman who has worked in collaboration with a diverse group of musicians such as the Norrbotten Big Band and Håkan Broström, Joakim Milder, Peter Danemo, Marie Mørck, Helen Salim, and Hannes Bennich. She has also received several prestigious awards, such as the Jazz Club Fasching Society Award in 2020, the STIM Stipendium in 2020 and was the winner of the Uno Naissoo Composition Contest 2016 in Estonia.
In 2020 The Britta Virves Trio played a set on Swedish Radio in Stockholm, that was broadcast on Estonian, Lithuanian, German, Bulgarian and Serbian radio. The performance was received positively from radio listeners all across Europe. The trio decided to record its first album in Nilento Studio outside of Gothenburg in November 2021. The Britta Virves’ debut album Juniper was released in October 2022 on Heartcore Records.
