Ivari Ilja, a native of Tallinn, Estonia, studied the piano at the Tallinn State Conservatory with Laine Mets and at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory with Vera Gornostayeva and Sergey Dorensky.

He is an internationally recognized accompanist and ensemble musician, and his collaborations with renowned singers Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Irina Arkhipova, Maria Guleghina and Elena Zaremba have been particularly successful. Together they have performed on several concert stages of the world, including Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, the Kennedy Center in Washington, Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, La Scala, London's Queen Elizabeth Hall and Wigmore Hall, the Bolshoi Theatre of Moscow, the great halls of the St. Peterburg Philharmonic and at the Moscow Conservatory, Staatsoper Hamburg, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Suntory Hall of Tokyo, Vienna Musikverein and the Salzburg Mozarteum, among others.

Mr. Ilja has also held solo recitals in France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Estonia, Russia, Sweden and Finland, and has performed as a soloist with several symphony orchestras such as Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, the Moscow Symphony Orchestra and the St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra under such conductors as Veronika Dudarova, Stephen Gunzenhauser, Eri Klas, Leo Krämer, Theodore Kuchar, Peeter Lilje, Roman Matsov, Andres Mustonen, Hannu Norjanen, Vello Pähn, Urs Schneider and Arvo Volmer. As a soloist, he has accompanied the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra on several tours to Germany, Sweden, Latvia and Lithuania.

His repertoire mostly consists of romantic music, primarily of the works by Frédéric Chopin, Johannes Brahms, Robert Schumann, but also Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Sergei Prokofiev, Benjamin Britten and others.

Since 2003, he has repeatedly toured with Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky throughout the United States, Europe, Hong Kong, Japan and elsewhere.