Culture.ee’s weekly recommendations: 25–31 Mar 2019

In 2019, Vanemuine Theatre celebrates the 80th anniversary of ballet in Vanemuine. It has been colourful, interesting, creative, often complicated but endlessly beautiful time.

The birthday gala is a bow to both the audience and to the theatre – the programme includes significant and historical numbers (also from the productions by legendary ballet masters such as Ida Urbel and Ülo Vilimaa) and the newer hits that have won the hearts of the audience.

In 2019, the aim of the Tallinn Music Week (TMW) is to offer a festival experience that is more compact and concentrated than before. This time the confirmed list of artists will exceed 200. The other parts of the program will also be compressed while the main festival locations will only be a short walk from one another. One inseparable part of TMW is a conference not only about the music industry but also more broadly about creativity as the catalyst for a new economy. The festival program also includes free city concerts, the open discussion series ‘TMW talks’ and other different undertakings including art projects and people initiatives in the city space.

A musical based on SIKSA’s “Stabat Mater Dolorosa” is a performative dream of making a movie come true, where both the dream and the movie are like chewing gum that has been tasteless for too long.

Siksa (Alex Freiheit: scream and lyrics & Piotr Buratyński: bass guitar noises) is the most divisive Polish artist in recent memory, whose radical and brutally honest performances are smashing the patriarchy one gig at a time.

In this concert series, Ensemble Triskele introduces Swedish and Estonian Swedish music that has influenced Estonian folk music a lot, especially in Western Estonia and the islands.

The ensemble has been active for over 20 years and has worked through music traditions of different countries and peoples. They have created their own unique sound and impressive collection of instruments.

To celebrate the 90th anniversary of Lennart Meri, his documentary ‘The Sons of Torum’ (1989/2014) will be screened at SuperNova Cinema.

An ancient Khanty bear feast ritual, estimated to be about 3000 years old, was filmed in Western Siberia, in Khantia-Mansia, at the Agan River, a tributary of the Ob, in September 1985 and in August 1988. Participants in the ceremony held at a Khanty summer camp included singers of old songs who travelled to the ritual place from several hundred kilometres away.

The Estonian National Male Choir (conductor Mikk Üleoja) and the Estonian Police and Border Guard Orchestra (conductor Hando Põldmäe) will be performing the four-part composition for male choir and brass band.

The composition is called ‘Taevalikud sõnumid’ (‘Heavenly Messages’) and it was created by Pärt Uusberg in 2014 to the text by Hando Runnel.

The aim of the festival is to map the Estonian audiovisual landscape (film, video art, documentary anthropology, and virtual media) and offer insights into what happens elsewhere in the world on the non-commercial experimental level.

New collaboration performance by Ruslan Stepanov and Artjom Astrov at Sõltumatu Tantsu Lava. The piece takes victimhood as its focus, projecting it on both performers’ and audience’s bodies, while, at the same time, drawing parallels with historical interpretations of freedom and independence.

There will be a guided tour at the exhibition “Gordon Matta-Clark: Anarchitect. Anu Vahtra: Completion through removal”, with the New Zealand-born architect Mark Wigley and Estonian artist Anu Vahtra. The tour will be held in English.

Performers: Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana (Switzerland) and Kalle Randalu (piano)

Conductor Markus Poschner

Programme:
Beethoven. Piano concerto no 3 in C minor, Op. 37
Beethoven. Symphony no 8 in F major, Op. 93