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Program and Artist Biography

 
Erkki-Sven Tüür: 7 Etudes in Pictures (2010)
A film portrait of Estonian composer Erkki-Sven Tüür
February 24, 2011 at 4 pm (Auditorium)

What does it really mean to be a composer? How is a musical work born? How to the first shivers of a thought and a graphical image turn into the first bars and further to a whole piece? What is a composer's respensibility toward his audience?

The documentary by Marianne Kõrver observes the different sides of being a composer - from writing a piece in the solitude of the woods of Hirmuste in the island Hiiumaa to orchestral rehearsals in co-operation with acclaimed conductors Paavo Järvi and Anu Tali, the travels and presentations in different parts of the world - Frankfurt, Amsterdam, and, naturally, Estonia, as well as immediate post-concert impressions by the listeners and top musicians. In addition to that, the reunion of Erkki-Sven Tüür's rock band IN SPE.

Erkki-Sven Tüür (b. 1959) started his musical activity in the second half of the seventies as a leader of progressive rock band IN SPE, influenced by the music of King Crimson, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Mike Oldfield, Frank Zappa, Yes and Genesis. In the second half of the eighties he entered Estonian music life as a professional composer. Tüür uses in his work a broad spectrum of compositional techniques. He has been interested in Gregorian chant and minimalism, linear polyphony and microtonality, twelve-tone music and sound-field technique.

Erkki-Sven has made a radical, yet very natural choice or him to live mainly in a sparsely inhabited island of Hiiumaa, far away from superficial and restless ways of the city, in order to devote himself to his main activity - musical visions that sound of vastness and dynamism of very different landscapes, the processes of nature, as well as urban energy.

Marianne Kõrver graduated from the Baltic Film and Media School with an MA degree in 2009 and has mostly directed documentaries. In 2005, Exitfilm produced her musical documentary about Eduard Tubin. In the course of making "Erkki-Sven Tüür: 7 Etudes in Pictures", Marianne Kõrver followed the protagonist for three years.

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