Mazing through the Old Town in Tallinn you’ll find an array of medieval churches, cobbled ginnels, and showpiece cathedrals. Estonia’s capital is a transportive place, and there are very few things better for the soul than clambering up ancient ramparts to gaze out upon a sprawling collage of red roofs in the springtime Baltic sunshine.
The pastoral, quaint beauty of the Old Town however belies the rest of the city. Modern day Tallinn is a thriving, modern boom town – Tallinn is alive – and no more so than last week, which saw the 2025 edition of Tallinn Music Week take over the Estonian capital with a bombastic programme of worldwide music from across the genre spectrum.
Radical reshapings of classical music, lightning takes on traditional folk styles, and sounds from the very cutting edge of rock, pop, and experimental music were the order of the day. From Thursday to Sunday, all of the city’s venues welcomed a vibrant array of local and international showcases. An eclectic, future-facing festival lineup in one of Europe’s most up-and-coming cities. What could be better?
“Every day, every hour, we need the new sound,” Maiko, the keyboard and woodwind extraordinaire from mile-a-minute Tanzanian duo Sisso and Maiko, tells me of his group’s own whirlwind Singeli compositions. But these words resonate beyond, an acute summary of my own experience of Tallinn Music Week itself.
Of course, from a stacked weekend, Sisso and Maiko’s Saturday Singeli takeover of the art gallery Fotografiska might well have been the highlight; the duo’s heady 200bpm dance music, made on glitching old macs, cartoonish Yamaha keyboards and a mixture of Southern African flutes, was unlike anything else at Tallinn Music Week, or indeed anywhere else in the world. Powering through electric cuts from their astronomical 2024 debut ‘Singeli Ya Maajabu’, Sisso and Maiko had the audience under their spell with a playful, eccentric and bold kind of dance music. They even blindfolded themselves with their headscarves for a short encore, and somehow got even better.
The energy levels were maintained by OneDa, a fire-spitting Mancunian emcee, and then brought back down to Earth by the ambient electronic wizardry of Taroug. Later that night, local hero Mart Avi would channel the same sense of adventure into his performance at the F-Hoone Black Hall. Most of the city’s venues are in the district of Telliskivi which Avi walked me round explaining: “I’ve been up on most of these roofs: this is where all of the rehearsal spaces used to be, and there has been a lot of crazy parties here.”
To a full house, Avi’s mixture of pummelling, icy new wave beats, and theatrical Billy Mackenzie-esque vocals held the audience enraptured. Avi is an entrancing performer, impossibly long limbs bandying about the stage in perfect sync to the gristly beats, showcasing that it is a matter of when and not if he will break through to a big international audience.
Tallinn Music Week’s lineup prides itself on its eclecticism, no more evident than at the Classical: Next showcase at the Roheline Saal auditorium on Friday night. Australian violin virtuoso Xani wove a monumental genre-fluid tapestry with just her fiddle and a board of effects pedals, whilst Estonian pianist Hanakiv filled the room with beautiful minimalist lullabies, arresting and emotional.
British group Vulva Voce (“the name on everybody’s lips”, apparently) were another favourite of the weekend. They wreaked havoc with the traditions of the string quartet, performing a mixture of works by 16th century lutist Maddalena Casulana (the first woman to ever publish sheet music), and savage originals that infused chamber music with a wild riot grrrl flair. They were followed by the elegant Estonian M4GNET Quartet, whose stirring performances of Estonian titan Arvo Pärt on his 90th birthday brought a captive audience to tears.
Elsewhere on the lineup, Icelandic shoegazers Oyama combined beautiful male-female vocal harmonies with tactile, fuzzy, reverb-laden guitars, something so beautiful when done right; whilst Welsh synth-pop iconoclast Ani Glass had a big venue dancing to Welsh language disco bangers. Ines De Ferrari somehow once more made it brat Summer as the snow started to fall on the medieval castles, and Abdoulaye Kouyate’s mix of soukous and funk acted as the perfect antidote to the nights’ colder moments.
I was blown away by so many things on this lineup but I think ultimately I was enthused by a festival embraced by the city’s locals – that was so happy to place so many disparate styles alongside each other. There are few places in the world happy to place classical music, jazz, punk, hyperpop, and African dance music together, but here you could flit between these singular art forms in seconds.
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Words: Cal Cashin
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Live Report: Tallinn Music Week 2025 – clashmusic.com
