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Andres Mustonen has been very active as conductor and violinist on the Israeli scene for the last seven seasons.  He performed for the first time with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra in 2012, and has conducted e.g. Bach’s Matthäus Passion, Mozart’s Missas, Haydn’s Creation, Händel’s Salomon and Beethoven’s symphonies. The cooperation with the orchestra has been fruitful in the framework of his own annual music festival MustonenFest Tallinn – Tel Aviv which he initiated in order to bring together Estonian and Israeli music and musicians. JSO has participated in all the festivals, starting from the very first in 2014. Throughout the years, many Estonian choirs and soloists have performed with the JBO. Last year, Beethoven’s Triple concerto with young Estonian soloists and Liszt’s Magnificat with Estonian Girls’ choir Ellerhein were the highlights of the festival.

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Andres Mustonen’s performances can be characterized as highly individual. With everything he does, he expresses his original outlook and musical cognition, be it conducting symphonies by Mahler and Shostakovich or the Vienna classics. His activities as conductor follow the curves of the music history. The core of his repertoire is made of oratorios, passions and dramatic symphonic works. He is strikingly active in performing compositions by his contemporary composers with whom he feels a profound creative relation. His mission is to bring excellent contemporary music closer to the audience all over the world, and he is dreaming of doing it one day also in Israel.

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Aside from conducting, Andres Mustonen widely performs with his group “Hortus Musicus” which he founded as a student as early as in the 1970s. The repertoire of this extraordinary group, which initially explored the Christian roots of the European music, now ranges from Indian, Arab and Jewish traditional tunes to the most contemporary compositions. The group performs regularly also in Israel.

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In addition to this, Mustonen likes playing chamber music with his friends and fellows, and performing emblematic baroque chef d’oeuvres like Brandenburg concertos and Goldberg Variations in a jazzy way with his Art Jazz Quartet. His jazz quartet has performed in Israel since 2014 and has been warmly welcomed.