Tõnu Kõrvits is one of Estonia's most prominent contemporary composers, writing orchestral and choral scores with complex textures, poetic moods, and eclectic sources of inspiration that include blues, rock, and Estonian folk music. He is also a prominent educator.

Kõrvits was born on April 9, 1969, in Tallinn, Estonia, then part of the Soviet Union. He attended the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, studying composition with Raimo Kango and graduating in 1994. He went on at the same school for further studies with Jaan Rääts, earning a master's degree. Kõrvits attended a master class for arrangers in Hilversum, Netherlands, with the Metropole Orchestra and its conductor Vince Mendoza, and since then, he has been active as an arranger in both classical and pop contexts. He also took a composition master class with Stephen Montague in Gdansk, Poland, in 1998. In 2001, Kõrvits joined the faculty of the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre in Tallinn; he has remained there ever since, reaching the rank of professor in 2017. His earliest works were in a neo-Romantic idiom, including To a Man, In Whose Eyes the Brightness of Polaris Sparkled (1993).

The year 2001 also saw a recording by Duo Concertante of Kõrvits' Two Preludes for guitar of 1995. Many of Kõrvits' early pieces were chamber works, but later, he began to specialize in full-scale orchestral and choral works with fantasy-like textures that, in the words of the Estonian Music Information Centre, offer "hypnotic journeys through the landscapes of nature and folk tradition, human soul, and subconscious." Major works include Eldorado (2002), inspired by the poem of the same name by Edgar Allan Poe, Elegies of Thule (2007, one of a number of Kõrvits works referring to that semi-mythical northern region), and Kreek's Notebook (2007), based on Estonian sacred folk melodies. Kõrvits' works draw on popular idioms as well as folk music, and for his use of the blues, he was made an honorary citizen of the important blues city of Clarksdale, Mississippi. In addition to major Estonian ensembles, Kõrvits' works have been programmed by such groups as the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Britten Sinfonia, and they have been heard at many European festivals. By the early 2020s, more than 20 of Kõrvits' compositions had been recorded; in 2022, Italy's Duo Gazzana included his Stalker Suite and Notturni on an ECM release. ~ James Manheim, Rovi