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Today, on 7th of April 2018 the cornerstone was laid for the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre’s (EAMT) new concert hall complex, which will feature a main hall with a capacity of 480 people, a blackbox theatre seating 130, and 21 new classrooms. The state of the art building that costs nearly 12 million euros will be ready by EAMT’s centenary next September.

The participants in the afternoon ceremony today were Minister of Education and Culture Mailis Reps, Minister of Culture Indrek Saar and the Academy Rector, Professor Ivari Ilja. For posterity, a time capsule emblazoned with the EAMT logo was installed in the cornerstone. The contents of the metal cylinder are: daily newspapers with today’s date, the blueprints of the new building, a silver postage stamp and souvenir coins of the country’s centenary and a tuning fork.

Minister of Education and Research Mailis Reps called the occasion a chance to rejoice for the school community and all music aficionados as well as the general public, because the new building will feature the concert hall with the best acoustics and the most up to date technology in Estonia.“I hope that the creative muse will find its way to this building too and inspire students in their studies and performers at concerts,” said Reps.

“The new building and the significantly broader possibilities for provision of education represent the start of a new chapter in the history of EAMT. It is very important for Estonian musical culture that the reach of international projects and research is broadening, the academy will make it on to the world educational map as an even more powerful symbol, appealing to music students and teachers across the world,” said Minister of Culture Indrek Saar.

The Rector of EAMT, prof. Ivari Ilja said he was pleased that after 20 years of patient waiting the conservatory would finally get its own concert hall, which was not built concurrently with the academic complex. “The state of the art complex to be completed for the academy’s centenary is indispensable for future top-level musicians and actors, allowing them, without leaving their alma mater, to gain as direct an experience as possible on the big stage, to be able to master acoustic particularities, to feel the heat of the klieg lights,” emphasised Ilja.“There is no concert hall with nearly 500 seats in Tallinn; so the new building will fill that gap as well.The complex is also good news for theatre-goers, because the EAMT symphony orchestra, top musicians from home and abroad, actors and directors, academy teaching staff and doyens of the international music scene teaching master classes in Tallinn will also use the performance venues.”

The central part of the 6,100-square-metre building will be the 480-seat concert hall, which is four storeys high from floor to ceiling and is best suited for classical music, although other musical styles will also find a home here. The 130-seat black box theatre rises three storeys and will be used by drama students and jazz musicians. The five-storey building with a lookout basement level will house 21 classrooms, including a multimedia studio and jazz lab.

EAMT Administrative Director Ott Maaten says all levels of the complex will be connected to the main building next door. “The concert hall with two balconies is the most important and biggest space and is located in the middle of the building. It can be accessed from the main building and also has a separate entrance from Sakala Street, so that the hall could be used flexibly for both teaching activity and events,” said Maaten. “The hall complex will be stylistically similar to the EAMT main building and the interior design will follow the conservative aesthetics of the building, characterised by dominant use of natural materials and primary colours. As this will be Estonia’s newest concert venue, the acoustics take into account the experiences of all previous concert halls.”

The EAMT concert hall complex was engineered by AS Resand. The architects were Toivo Tammik and Mart Rõuk from the architectural design office Ansambel, and the interior architecture in the performance venues is by Aivar Oja from FraDisain OÜ. The acoustics project is by Linda Madalik in collaboration with the Danish acoustics office of Gade&Mortensen Akustik. Construction will be performed by Nordlin Ehitus AS and the owner’s supervision will be carried out by Tallinna Linnaehituse AS. The construction of the complex is being funded by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, the European Regional Development Fund and EMTA.

Photo: Õhtuleht (Alar Truu)

The Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre is the first in Estonia to use the unique LoLa (low latency) technology tool that enables real time musical performances where musicians are physically located in remote sites (up to 4000 km) connected by advanced network services with no significant distortion or delay.

LoLa was introduced in a concert “Music without Borders” on 5 October that served as an introduction to the 2nd Eastern Partnership Ministerial Meeting on Digital Economy featuring top musicians from Tallinn and Minsk, Belarus, who performed together in real time. Among them were Rector of the EAMT, pianist Ivari Ilja, Vice-Rector of the EAMT, cellist Henry-David Varema, jazz pianist Kirke Karja and singer Laura Põldvere. The Estonian musicians were joined in Minsk by a number of Belarusian and Georgian musicians such as renowned jazz saxophonist Reso Kiknadze, Rector of Tbilisi State Conservatory.

Even though introduced first time in Estonia, the LoLa technology has been in use in many music schools in Europe, the US and elsewhere for teaching, master classes, rehearsals and performances since its first public demonstration in 2010. It is now available in Eastern Partnership countries thanks to the EaPConnect project that sets out to create a regional research and education network in Eastern Europe and the Southern Caucasus with the objective to decrease the digital divide, improve intra-regional connectivity and facilitate participation of local scientists, students and academics in global research and education collaborations. EaPConnect is managed by the networking organisation GÉANT in collaboration with the national research and education networks in the six beneficiary partner countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine), and includes associate partners from other world regions.

The LoLa project research and development team is a collaboration between Conservtorio di Musica G. Tartini, Trieste, and the Italian research and academic network GARR. The idea of LoLa was conceived in 2005 and was commended by the international research and education networking community with GÉANT Community Award in 2017.

Today, 12 September is the important day, when the inaugural ceremony of the new Rector of the EAMT, Prof. Ivari Ilja will take place at 16.00 in the Chamber hall of the EAMT. The medal symbolizing the office of the Rector will be presented to Prof. Ilja by the President of Estonia, Kersti Kaljulaid, and the ceremony will be broadcasted live by the Estonian Public Broadcasting Culture portal.

In addition to the President, the members of the EAMT and other invited guests will be addressed by the Minister of Research and Education, Mailis Reps; Minister of Culture, Inderk saar; Representative of the Council of Rectors of Estonian Universities, Prof. Mart Kalm; Vice-Head of the EAMT Student Council, Karl Joosep Sinisalu, and many others.

Musical greetings will be presented by the Choir of the EAMT under the baton of Tõnu Kaljuste, by the internationally acclaimed pianists Mihkel Poll and Stenn Lassmann, and Estonian zither player Anna-Liisa Eller.

Prof. Ivari Ilja studied piano at Tallinn State Conservatoire under Prof. Laine Mets and at Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatoire under Professors Vera Gornostayeva and Sergey Dorensky. He has been a member of the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre faculty since 1986 and held the position of Head of the Piano Department from 2000 to 2015. He is currently Chairman of the Board of the Estonian Association of Professional Musicians and Member of the Board of the Estonian Music Council.

Professor Ivari Ilja elected to be the next rector of the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre

Professor Ilja received 30 votes in the 55-strong electoral council in the first round of elections for rector of the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre on Wednesday May 3rd.

Candidates for the position were professor Ivari Ilja of the Piano Department, professor Kerri Kotta of the Musicology Department, professor Marje Lohuaru of Instrumental Chamber Music Centre and professor Toomas Vavilov of the Brass and Woodwind Department.

The rector is elected for a term of five years by the electoral council, which comprises the members of the EAMT council, the Board of Governors, professors and lead research fellows whose work load is at least 0.5 and student representatives named by the the student council.

Professor Ivari Ilja has been a member of the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre faculty since 1986 and held the position of Head of the Piano Department from 2000 to 2015.

He is currently Chairman of the Board of the Estonian Association of Professional Musicians and Member of the Board of the Estonian Music Council.

Professor Ilja’s term as rector will begin on 1th September 2017.

Ivari Ilja studied the piano at the Tallinn State Conservatoire with Professor Laine Mets and at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatoire with Professor Vera Gornostayeva and Professor Sergey Dorensky.

Ivari Ilja is an internationally recognized pianist, accompanist and ensemble musician. His collaboration with renowned singers Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Irina Arkhipova, Maria Guleghina and Elena Zaremba has been particularly successful and acclaimed. Together they have performed many of the great concert stages of the world, including Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Avery Fisher Hall of New York, The Kennedy Center of Washington, Davies Symphony Hall San Francisco, La Scala in Milan, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Wigmore Hall in London, the Bolshoi Theatre of Moscow, the great halls of St. Peterburg Philharmonic and Moscow Conservatory, Staatsoper Hamburg, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Suntory Hall of Tokyo, Musikverein of Vienna and Mozarteum of Salzburg.

Ivari Ilja has also held solo recitals in France, United Kingdom, Germany, Estonia, Russia, Sweden, Finland and performed as a soloist with several symphony orchestras such as Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, the St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra etc.

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 great Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky in USA, Europe, Hong-Kong, Japan and elsewhere.

Estonian composer Veljo Tormis died at the age of 86 on Saturday, 21 January 2017.

Born in Aru village, Kuusalu Parish, Harju County, Tormis had a profound experience with choral music starting at an early age.

When he was seven, his family moved to Kivi-Vigala village, where his father worked as a sacristan – his father was teaching music and worked as an organist at a local church. The family home also had an organ that provided Tormis with his first playing experience.

Tormis began his formal musical education in 1943 at the Tallinn Music School. In 1949, he entered the Tallinn Conservatory and continued his studies at the Moscow Conservatory (1951–1956). Soon after, he acquired a teaching position at the Tallinn Music School (1955–60), where Arvo Pärt was among his students. He held another teaching position at the Tallinn Music High School (1962–66), but by 1969 was supporting himself exclusively as a freelance composer.

The winner of the European Composer Award 2016 is Estonian composer Liisa Hirsch! Her piece “Mechanics of Flying” was performed at Young Euro Classic festival on 31 August in Berlin Konzerthaus by the Symphony Orchestra of the EAMT under the baton of Paul Mägi. The award, determined by an 11-member audience jury, is given in recognition of the festival’s best world premiere.

Liisa Hirsch (1984) studied composition at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre under Toivo Tulev obtaining her BA degree in 2009. She further improved her skills in piano under Ivari Ilja, electronic music under Margo Kõlar and improvisation under Anto Pett. Liisa is currently taking her MA degree in composition at the The Royal Conservatory of The Hague under Peter Adriaansz and Cornelis de Bondt.

The Symphony Orchestra of the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre is performing tonight in Berlin Konzerthaus at the renowned music festival Young Euro Classic 2016.

Under the baton of Paul Mägi with pianist Marrit Gerretz-Traksmann as soloist the programme features “Lamentate” (2002) by Arvo Pärt, Symphony No 2 in B-Minor “The Legendary” (1937) by Eduard Tubin and a world premiere of “Mechanics of Flying” by Liisa Hirsch. The concert starts at 8 p.m. (9 p.m. in Estonia) and is live streamed by ARTE.