A musician known for his distinctive voice and wide-ranging influences, Roman Mints is a violinist whose work encompasses solo performance, chamber music and contemporary repertoire. He has collaborated with musicians including 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, and has worked with conductors Andrew Davis, Saulius Sondeckis, Vladimir Ziva and Natalia Ponomarchuk.
He has appeared with ensembles such as the London Mozart Players, London Chamber Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra, Brno Philharmonic, Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, Kremerata Baltica and Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, and was a member of the Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble.
Mints has recorded for ECM, Harmonia Mundi, Quartz and Melodiya. An ECM album of works by Dobrinka Tabakova was nominated for a GRAMMY® Award for Best Classical Compendium, and he also appears on her Sun Triptych, selected as BBC Music Magazine Orchestral Choice (December 2025) and nominated for the 2026 BBC Music Magazine Awards. His most recent release, Kol Nidre, a programme of Jewish music, was issued by Quartz Music in November 2025.
His solo violin recording, employing a recording method he developed and termed “spatial orchestration,” was chosen as WQXR New York’s CD of the Week and included in Fanfare magazine’s annual critics’ wish list. A recording of Leonid Desyatnikov’s music for violin and orchestra received an ICMA nomination and five-star reviews in BBC Music Magazine. His recording of the Hindemith sonatas with pianist Alexander Kobrin received a Supersonic Award from Pizzicato magazine.
He has given the premieres of more than one hundred works by composers including Dobrinka Tabakova, Leonid Desyatnikov, Elena Langer, Alexey Kurbatov, Ed Bennett, Brian Irvine, Diana Burrell, Boris Filanovsky and Dmitri Kourliandsky.
In 1998 Mints co-founded the Homecoming Chamber Music Festival in Moscow, recognised for its thematic and historically informed programming; he has since devised more than sixty programmes for the series. In 2002 he co-directed the Suppressed Music project in Russia, comprising concerts and a conference devoted to composers whose works had been censored, accompanied by a publication and CD issued by Klassika XXI.
Alongside his concert work he frequently collaborates in interdisciplinary contexts. Projects have included performances with free-improvising saxophonist Paul Dunmall, vocalist Alisa Ten, the Brian Irvine Ensemble, the Pokrovsky Ensemble, and the electronic groups EU and AIGEL. He has appeared in theatrical productions including Elena Langer’s Ariadne and Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale, working with theatre directors Vasily Barkhatov and Tim Hopkins, choreographers Alla Sigalova and Oleg Glushkov, and film director Alexander Zeldovich. His recording of Marjan Mozetich’s Violin Concerto Affairs of the Heart has been used in productions by Hong Kong Ballet, Royal Winnipeg Ballet and Q-Dance Company.
Mints teaches violin at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance and the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he has been actively involved in charitable initiatives supporting Ukrainian medical relief, including benefit concerts at the Duke’s Hall, Royal Academy of Music, and St John’s Waterloo in London.
In 2024 he co-founded the Open Bar Chamber Music Festival in Montenegro and later the same year launched Another Music Festival in London.
Roman Mints began playing the violin at the age of five. In 1994 he was awarded 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. He lives in London and performs on a Francesco Ruggieri violin made in Cremona circa 1685.