Estonian Music Days Have Begun

Text Timo Raussi

Photo EMP / Rene Jakobson

At the same time as the three-day music programme of Tallinn Music Week reaches its culmination today, Saturday, the more than week-long Estonian Music Days gets underway. Held since 1979, the festival is one of the most important annual events in Estonia’s classical music calendar, although in recent years its content has expanded in an increasingly international direction, and toward performances that cross the boundaries between musical genres.

The festival, which takes place across Tallinn and Tartu, is organised by the Estonian Composers Union, which celebrated its centenary last year. Artistic direction is led by composers Helena Tulve and Timo Steiner in Tallinn, and Märt-Matis Lill in Tartu. The organisers describe the festival as a kind of orchestral stage where works by young and already renowned composers are performed side by side, and where Estonia’s leading choirs, orchestras and soloists present pieces written especially for them, including sometimes experimental works that would rarely be performed elsewhere.

Concerts of the Estonian Music Days take place in ten different venues in Tallinn and Tartu, as well as at the Arvo Pärt Centre in Laulasmaa. The official opening concert this evening at the Estonia Concert Hall features a collaboration between the Estonian National Male Choir and the ensemble of the Estonian Electronic Music Society, or EMA, also pictured in the main event image. The programme includes new works by young Estonian composers, a special version of “.ram” composed by Ülo Krigul for male choir and synthesisers, and new arrangements of works by composer Veljo Tormis, who passed away in 2017.

Even before the opening concert, however, the festival makes a notable departure from traditional classical music venues such as concert halls and churches. At the club HALL—better known as a techno venue located in a former industrial building—a joint production of music theatre and lighting art titled “Birth of Light” will be staged. The music is performed by the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra with Joonas Mikk, a young singer from the Estonia Theatre Boys Choir.

This particular performance is already sold out, but the full programme of the Estonian Music Days, running from 11 to 23 April, along with performers and ticket information, can be found on the festival’s official website here.

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Classical Music Concert Contemporary Music events Festival Tallinn Tartu