Tallinn Music Week Beyond Sound from Visual Art, Cuisine and Music Books Club to a tour in Arvo Pärt Centre

Tallinn Music Week (TMW) festival, taking place next week from 3-6 April, offers a cultural journey through Estonia’s capital. From pop-up performances to curated art tours, hand-picked gastronomic discoveries and engaging public talks, the TMW city festival invites visitors to explore Tallinn through a fresh, imaginative lens. The 90th jubilee of Estonia’s preeminent composer, Arvo Pärt, will be honoured with a tour to the Arvo Pärt Centre in nearby Laulasmaa. 

Art: Time and Space Games, New Irony and 90s Expressionism

On the festival’s opening day, Thursday, 3 April, at 6pm, sound artist and cultural curator Aivar Tõnso‘s exhibition “Light Matter in Dark State” will open at the EKA Gallery. The installation explores temporal and spatial dimensions through Tõnso’s innovative Dissonance Speaker System, creating immersive sonic environments that challenge conventional listening experiences. A curator’s tour of the exhibition will take place on Saturday, 5 April, at 3pm.

On the afternoons of 4-5 April, curated art tours will guide visitors through Noblessner and Telliskivi Creative City. The Noblessner district features Flo Kasearu‘s provocative solo exhibition “BANANA – Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone” at Kai Art Center, alongside the internationally renowned Temnikova & Kasela Gallery’s group exhibition “Don’t Take It Too Seriously,” which examines the phenomenon of new irony in current day and age. 

The art tour through Telliskivi Creative City, the cultural heart of TMW, encompasses both indoor and outdoor gallery spaces. Fotografiska Tallinn presents legendary sports photographer Lembit Peegel‘s compelling solo exhibition, where evocative black-and-white photographs from Soviet-era mass sports events are juxtaposed with tricoloured victory moments from Estonia’s first Olympic Games after regaining independence—visual narratives that frame the nation’s renaissance.

Vaal Gallery, Estonia’s pioneering privately funded art space, hosts the “Dirty Snow” exhibition by the Rühm T art trio marking also 35 years since VAAL’s establishment. The exhibition references the influential Estonian art provocateurs’ expressionist revolt that stood defiantly against the prevailing artistic canon of 1991, armed with transcendental speculative philosophy and reshaping the country’s cultural landscape.

Additional information: TMW Art 

Talks and City Stages 

Estonian superstar ALIKA and Swedish-American country ace Anthony Mills can be seen performing in the atrium of Viru Centre from Saturday noon. Later on, Nihe café on Telliskivi Street will host local singer-songwriter Sissi and Guinea-rooted “Jazzman” Abdoulaye Kouyaté‘s afternoon performance. Terminal Records & Bar will welcome Estonian musicians Tuulikki Bartosik and Sander Mölder for an exclusive live set, before they join music tech veteran Graham Ball to discuss how to maintain authentic creativity in an over-technologised world.

Afterwards, Terminal will invite audiences to dive into literary rock’n’roll adventures featuring tales from Estonia’s punk revolution, anecdotal rock trivia, and the secret history of Kosovo’s underground. Estonian researcher and musician Brigitta Davidjants will introduce her book “J.M.K.E.’s To The Cold Land,” published in Bloomsbury’s 33 1/3 Europe series, which examines Estonia’s most famous punk band’s landmark 1989 album. Austrian music industry’s allrounder Hannes Tschürtz will read excerpts from his entertaining collection of trivia from pop’s golden age, “Useless Music Knowledge,” and Kosovo’s arts promoter Ismail Myrseli will present his ethnomusicological art book “Memoir 5/5,” which compiles tailored narratives, memoirs and diaries by five musicians from Kosovo and Serbia, dating back to the Yugoslav era.

Additional information: TMW Talks and City Stages 

Tastes: Spring Brunch, Authentic Ukrainian Dinner, and more 

TMW Tastes programme helps navigate the city’s food culture landscape from Viru Food Street through the Old Town to Telliskivi Creative City and Kopli. The programme also offers  special dinners at SLAVA restaurant featuring authentic Ukrainian food from Bukovinian salad to borscht with pampushka. Fotografiska Restaurant introduces its spring brunch concept, complemented by a carefully curated soundtrack from musician and DJ Maris Pihlap.Beloved Record Fair returns to TMW, gathering music lovers and audiophiles at the Baltic Station Market gates on Saturday. There’s also plenty on offer for children and youngsters at the TMW Kid’s Festival and Youth Festival.

Most TMW venues sit within a pleasant stroll or leisurely cycle of one another, inviting festival-goers to embrace the fresh air of early spring Tallinn whilst boosting their wellbeing and treading lightly on the environment.

For those eager to venture beyond the city’s boundaries, TMW presents a special cultural journey in honour of Arvo Pärt‘s 90th jubilee. As one of the world’s most performed living composers, Pärt’s legacy is celebrated through a tour in the Arvo Pärt Centre in picturesque Laulasmaa, just 35 kilometres from Tallinn, on a peninsula in a pine forest near the sea. The tour includes bus transport and a guided tour in English. Additional information