Audio Spa

AUDIO SPA CONCERT SERIES
The Concert Mile – Four Concerts by the Seaside

The popular concert series “Audio Spa” takes the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra (ERSO) out of the academic concert hall, offering listeners exciting musical journeys and new horizons. As this season’s concerts take place in various locations across Tallinn with stunning seaside views, the series carries the subtitle “The Concert Mile”.

The opening concert at the Seaplane Harbour features the cult masterpiece Music for Airports by ambient music pioneer Brian Eno. The idea behind the British composer’s legendary album Ambient 1: Music for Airports was to soothe travellers’ fear of flying with music that blends into the environment and brightens the surrounding atmosphere. The work was inspired by Eno’s own frustrating experience at Cologne Bonn Airport, where irritating background music intensified his pre-flight anxiety. Music for Airports was released in 1978 and has since been installed in several airports worldwide. The piece was first adapted for the concert stage by Bang on a Can All-Stars, who also performed it for Tallinn audiences in 1999.

This autumn, the new Taru Nature House opens its doors in the Noblessner district. ERSO chamber musicians take the audience on a journey into the world of nature sounds. The evening opens with The Garden of Love, an oboe piece by Dutch composer JacobTV, based on William Blake’s dreamlike poem. In Luciano Berio’s playful and witty wind quintet Opus Number Zoo, the performers not only play music but also tell stories. John Eriksson’s marimba piece Träd, for four performers, is rooted in suggestive music built on repetition. Hypnotic sound patterns are created in Steve Reich’s minimalist marimba works Nagoya Marimbas and Vermont Counterpoint. Mason Bates’s Life of Birds, for four instruments, evokes the movements and calls of birds. In Mirjam Tally’s airy work The Birds for Company, the cello conjures a fantastical soundscape of primordial and cyber birds.

Kai Art Center has become a favourite destination for film and art enthusiasts. The ERSO String Quartet presents a programme combining beautiful meditative music with rhythmic minimalism. Arvo Pärt’s Fratres is one of the composer’s best-known and most beloved works and has been used in numerous films to heighten dramatic moments. One of these is Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood (2007), whose original music was written by Jonny Greenwood, known as a member of the rock band Radiohead. The concert also features Greenwood’s Suite from the film There Will Be Blood. In Steve Reich’s energetic Triple Quartet, the musicians perform together with pre-recorded sound material, creating a gripping and intense string sound. The programme concludes with a version for strings of The Fruit of Silence, a popular choral work by Latvia’s best-known contemporary composer, Pēteris Vasks. This slow, gentle and mysteriously timeless piece is based on Mother Teresa’s peace prayer.

In April, ERSO’s “Audio Spa” series presents a sunset concert at the Cruise Terminal. Inspired by light, movement and sea voyages, the varied programme features a different ensemble of musicians in each work. The evening opens with Light Screens, a spirited work by American composer Andrew Norman, inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright’s art-glass windows. The Swedish folk song Who Can Sail Without a Breeze?, arranged by Mogens Andresen, is performed by a trombone quartet. The journey continues with Gabriella Smith’s meditative ensemble work Maré and Tõnu Kõrvits’s cello piece Wanderer’s Song.

Among the concert’s most substantial works are Tōru Takemitsu’s Toward the Sea III and Jüri Reinvere’s The Arrival at the Ligurian Sea, two sea poems with an impressionistic hue. The evening concludes with the suggestive rhythmic patterns of Philip Glass’s Prelude to Endgame, heard in a dialogue between double bass and timpani.

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