One of the most outstanding and original musicians of his generation, Roman Mints has collaborated with such prominent musicians as Gidon Kremer, Misha Maisky, Sharon Bezaly, Nicholas Daniel, Ingrid Fliter, Alexander Kobrin, Vadym Kholodenko, Katya Apekisheva, Kristina Blaumane, Maxim Rysanov, Nils Mönkemeyer, Gweneth-Ann Jeffers and Anna Dennis. He has also worked alongside conductors Andrew Davis, Saulius Sondeckis, Vladimir Ziva and Natalia Ponomarchuk, among others.
Roman has performed with leading ensembles including the London Mozart Players, London Chamber Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra, Brno Philharmonic, Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, Kremerata Baltica and Tallinn Chamber Orchestra. He has also been a member of the Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble, the oldest contemporary music group in Russia.
Roman has recorded for ECM, Harmonia Mundi, Quartz and Melodiya, with albums featuring a number of world-premiere recordings. An album of works by Dobrinka Tabakova for ECM was nominated for a GRAMMY® Award for Best Classical Compendium. He was also featured on another ECM album of Tabakova’s music, Sun Triptych, which was awarded BBC Music Magazine Orchestral Choice in December 2025. His latest album is Kol Nidre, an album of Jewish music, released by Quartz Music in November 2025.
His recording of solo violin music, using an innovative recording approach invented by Roman and dubbed “spatial orchestration,” was selected as CD of the Week by WQXR Radio New York and included on the annual wish list of Fanfare magazine critics. The album of Leonid Desyatnikov’s music for violin and orchestra was nominated for an ICMA Award and received a Five-Star review for both performance and recording in BBC Music Magazine. His album of Hindemith Sonatas with pianist Alexander Kobrin won a Supersonic Award from Pizzicato magazine.
Roman has given world premieres of over one hundred works by composers including Dobrinka Tabakova, Leonid Desyatnikov, Langer, Kurbatov, Bennett, Irvine, Burrell, Filanovsky and Kourliandsky.
In 1998, Roman Mints co-founded the Homecoming Chamber Music Festival in Moscow, which gained widespread recognition for its intellectually driven, thematically curated programmes. Since its inception, he has authored more than sixty such programmes. In 2002, he co-directed the Suppressed Music project in Russia, comprising concerts and a conference devoted to composers whose music had been suppressed; a book and CD were subsequently released by Klassika XXI Publishing House.
Beyond the classical sphere, Roman has collaborated with free-improvising saxophonist Paul Dunmall, vocalist Alisa Ten, the Brian Irvine Ensemble, the Pokrovsky Ensemble, and IDM bands EU and AIGEL. He has also participated in theatre productions including Langer’s Ariadne and Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale, and has worked with theatre directors Vasily Barkhatov and Tim Hopkins, choreographers Alla Sigalova and Oleg Glushkov, and film director Alexander Zeldovich. His recording of the Mozetich Violin Concerto Affairs of the Heart has been used in productions by Hong Kong Ballet, Royal Winnipeg Ballet and the Q-Dance Company.
Roman teaches violin at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance and the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire.
Following the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Roman has been actively involved in charitable work in support of the Ukrainian people, including benefit concerts at the Duke’s Hall at the Royal Academy of Music and at St John’s, Waterloo, raising funds for medical supplies and ambulances for Ukrainian hospitals.
In the summer of 2024, Roman co-founded the Open Bar Chamber Music Festival in Montenegro. Later the same year, he founded Another Music Festival in London.
Roman Mints began playing the violin at the age of five. In 1994, he won a Foundation Scholarship to the Royal College of Music in London and also studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, winning prizes at both institutions. His principal teachers were Felix Andrievsky, Larisa Svetlova and Natalia Fikhtengoltz. Roman lives in London and plays a Francesco Ruggieri violin, circa 1685.