Biography
Dmitry Sitkovetsky is internationally renowned as a violinist, conductor and arranger whose career combines performance with the creation of ensembles, festivals and new repertoire. Across more than four decades, his work has been distinguished by musical imagination and a commitment to sharing music.
His transcriptions of Bach’s Goldberg Variations for string trio and string orchestra areperformed and recorded worldwide. He has arranged more than 60 works by composers including Bartók, Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Shostakovich and Stravinsky.
As a violinist, he has appeared with orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and New York Philharmonic. His discography comprises more than 40 recordings, with collaborators including the London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and conductors Sir Colin Davis, Mariss Jansons, Sir Neville Marriner and Yehudi Menuhin.
His conducting engagements span Europe, North America and Asia. In 1990, he founded the New European Strings Chamber Orchestra, bringing together distinguished musiciansfrom leading European ensembles. He served as Music Director of the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra from 2003 to 2023.
He has helped create and develop festivals in the United States, Italy, Finland and Azerbaijan. A committed mentor, he serves on the juries of major international competitionsand is a patron of The Purcell School for Young Musicians. His autobiographical podcast, Keeping the Flame, explores music, family history and cultural memory. The 2026-27 season marks the 60th anniversary of his First Prize at the Concertino Prague Competition, celebrated with a jubilee concert at Prague’s Rudolfinum on 18 October 2026.
He returns to the Baku International Arts Festival as its founder, appearing in three programmers as violinist and conductor of the BIAF Festival Orchestra. His teaching engagements include masterclasses in Vienna, Berlin, Paris, Rome, Lugano, Malta, San Sebastián and Warsaw. A second season of his autobiographical podcast, Keeping the Flame, is due in autumn 2026.