New York, NY (Top40 Charts/ Tallinn Music Week) Tallinn
Music Week is a showcase festival and a music industry networking event that started out in 2009. Having partnered up with the European Capital of Culture Tallinn 2011 and the country's very own brainchild, Skype, the event is a strong new initiative with the aim of integrating the Estonian music scene effectively into the European music industry circuit, thus providing a new platform for the country's best talent to spread further from Estonian borders.
Some encouraging success stories are already taking shape with last year's Skype Award winner, Iiris; fire-folkers, Svjata Vatra; lovely jazz chanteuse, Kadri Voorand; the beat master, Bert On Beats; indie-rockers, Aides; hardcore outfit, Goresoerd; and the mysterious bedroom synth-songstress,
Maria Minerva, all stirring up levels of excitement outside Estonia. The viking-metal masters, Metsatoll, and the edgy Estonian bubble-goth princess, Kerli, have both made their mark already.
During its third edition, Tallinn
Music Week will present a lineup of almost 150 bands and artists from 10 different countries. Of these acts 124 of them are Estonian, 11 from Finland, 3 from Latvia, 2 from Russia and 1 each from Lithuania, Sweden, UK, Canada, Japan and France. For the first time the festival opened up an applications round, which resulted in 280 applications received from across the world.
The festival programming over three nights (24-26 March) will cover all styles of music from indie-rock and electronic to metal, folk, jazz, contemporary classical and, for the first time this year, a special night of classical music at the
National Estonia Concert Hall. The showcase venues will include the festival's hot spot, Von Krahl, with a programme running over three nights and two floors. Tallinn's biggest live venue, Rock Cafe, will open up two halls to host the Tuborg Green Club with electro-pop on Friday and a special choice of Universal-signed artists on Saturday. Metal club, Tapper, will hold a three-night metal fest of its own while dark electronica club, RockStars, also has a good dose of metal in store for Friday. The medieval
Black Brotherhood Guild House (Mustpeade Maja) is to present fresh indie-pop on Friday and contemporary classical music on Saturday. Tallinn's pride of modern cutting edge architecture, the Rotermanni Centre, will be open for folk and jazz while club Korter will host the Estonian hip-hop stars as well as the festival after-party on Saturday. The lovely locale, Juuksur (Hairdresser's), will present psychedelic folk while the brand new "must-go-to" venue, F-Hoone at the Telliskivi creative centre, will present the best of dance music. To top it all off, the Estonia Concert Hall will host the brightest of classical music.
As always, Tallinn
Music Week will bring along around 100 international delegates from throughout Europe, including showcase-festival programmers, promoters, record labels and publishers. There is more interest than ever in the Eastern European front so the mix of delegates will definitely be as exciting as possible. Tallinn
Music Week's conference will discuss the present and the future of the music business with the focus on new business models and innovative artist management. In cooperation with the Estonian Academy of
Music and Theatre and a newly formed Estonian
Music Development Centre there will be an annual music managers training programme running throughout the year to take the initiative of supporting and training young Estonian music managers even further.
Tallinn
Music Week dates are:
24th March - the opening night
25th and 26th March - seminars and showcase-festival
