A new concert series „Crossing Cultures“, focusing on the foreign students of EAMT, was kicked off last Sunday. Each concert in the series will be devoted to one country and its students studying at EAMT, who will perform alongside the Estonian students.

„Our foreign students come from many different countries and the main idea of the new series is to dedicate each concert to one of those countries. Enabling the foreign students to perform together with their Estonian colleagues, we enable an exchange not only in a form of musical collaboration, but in terms of a cultural exchange in a wider sense. Namely, each concert will include also an oral introduction to the culture of the country in the spotlight“, explains Henry-David Varema, Vice-Rector for Artistic Affairs and International Relations. For instance, in the first concert that was dedicated to South-Korea and featured performances by South-Korean and Estonian students, and alumni of EAMT, the overview on the country’s culture was given by Jason Mario Dydynski, doctoral student of semiotics and cultural theories of University of Tartu.

The countries featured during the next season are Finland, Latvia, Spain and China. „It’s quite common not to know too much about the cultural heritage and background of our foreign colleagues. Thus, the new concert series will hopefully not only help to bring closer the students, academic staff and audience of EAMT, but perhaps also helps to disprove different and unfortunately still widespread myths regarding the foreign students,“ Varema adds.