Estonian-born Järvi is Cincinnati Symphony music director Paavo Jarvi's younger brother and very much his own man. Writer Mary Ellyn Hutton of the Cincinnatti Post caught up with him at a café in Tallinn in May, where he conducted a show-stopping "Aladdin" Suite by Carl Nielsen on a concert honoring their father Neeme Jarvi's 70th birthday. With him were his two sons, Finn Byron, born in February to Kristjan and his wife Hayley Melitta, and Lukas, 7, from his first marriage to violinist Leila Josefowicz.

There are three Järvi conductors (so far), Paavo, 44, Kristjan, 35, and Neeme (former music director of the Detroit Symphony, now music director of the New Jersey Symphony and the Hague Residentie Orchestra in The Netherlands). Like Paavo and their sister, flutist Maarika Järvi, 43, Kristjan was inoculated with music at an early age. Neeme likes to tell the story of toddler Kristjan complaining "Mozart hit me" after tumbling from a loudspeaker he had been climbing to see where the sound came from. He was 7 when the family left Estonia and came to the U.S. in 1980. A decade younger than his siblings, he adjusted quickly to life in America, speaks without an accent and grew up a hip New Yorker.

FULL STORY | Check him out, white suit and all, at www.kristjanjarvi.com.