Joonas Haavisto started his musical studies in the age of seven by playing classical double bass in the conservatory of his home town Kokkola. He played the double bass for six years and he also sang in a boy choir for five years. Joonas started playing the piano in the age of 16.
At the Sibelius-Academy, department of jazz Joonas has had a great honour to study piano with Mikael Jakobson, Jim Beard, Jukkis Uotila and Seppo Kantonen. He has had Master classes for example with Randy Brecker, Dave Kikoski and Chris Potter. Despite his young age Joonas has played with such a great musicians as Ron Mclure, Gary Keller, Dante Luciani, Leo Brooks, Bill Watrous, Bertil Strandberg and Jukka Perko. In 2005 he got a scholar from the Sibelius-Academy for studies in the University of Miami, Frost School of Music, where Joonas played in various groups with local musicians and founded his own international group called IMPORT with whom they had conserts and gigs around Miami.
Two of his major bands in the past years have been his own trio Joonas Haavisto Trio and a quartet called FourTH Quartet, with whom he has performed in various countries in Europe. For these groups Joonas composes his own tunes in which he combines american jazz tradition to his influences from other music styles. Joonas has also performed as a solo pianist and he won the 1st price in the international Piano Competition-Festival â€Jazz Improvisation 2006†in Vilnius, Lithuania in 2006. In May 2007 Joonas Haavisto Trio performed with a world class Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra. Kirmo Lintinen conducted the consert and they got composings and arrangements for that unique project from the fine Finnish composers such as Mikko Hassinen and Jarmo Savolainen.
In the near future Joonas is planning to record his first album with one of his groups.
