News

At the end of April, the Arvo Pärt Centre announced a competition for a residency scholarship, which allows one artist to focus on their work at the centre for up to a month. The first scholarship was awarded to Austrian composer and artist Annamaria Kowalsky.

In mid-April, when the exhibition halls and museums were closed, we talked to Arvo Pärt about what was happening in his creative life between 1963 and 1964. This discussion focused on the creative history of Symphony No. 1 and the choral composition "Solfeggio", both written in 1963.

Today, at the age of 99, the brilliant and beloved Estonian composer Ester Mägi (10 Jan 1922 – 14 May 2021), whose quietly powerful music has touched many hearts, has left us.

Arvo Pärt’s a cappella choral work, O Holy Father Nicholas, will be premiered in New York City in the Fall of 2021. The premiere will take place during the opening of the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and National Shrine at the World Trade Center Ground Zero site, performed by Schola Cantorum and guest conducted by Benedict Sheehan (Grammy Nominated).

The Arvo Pärt Centre is launching its recidency programme, offering artists from different fields of creativity a possibility to look for new ideas and concentrate on their work. The residency’s duration is from 1 to 4 weeks. The Centre awards a residency scholarship twice a year.

40 years ago, on 25 April 1981, the piece De profundis for male choir, percussion ad libitum and organ premiered at the festival “Neue Musik in die Kirche” in Germany.

The Arvo Pärt Centre is joining the PAI initiative, calling for gratitude and appreciation to be expressed towards the nurses and care workers who are looking after our health and fighting at the forefront of the pandemic.

60 years ago today, on 11 March 1961, Arvo Pärt’s Nekrolog for orchestra was performed for the first time in the Pillar Hall at the House of the Unions in Moscow, under the baton of Roman Matsov. The tumultuous story of Nekrolog proves the extent to which the reception and fate of a composition depends on the time and the place the work was written, and the impact a work can have on a composer’s entire future oeuvre.

Starting on 12 February, we welcome you to the audio-visual journey “Ansel”, in which the photographer Kaupo Kikkas addresses such themes as silence, solitude and man’s relationship with nature. At the core of this distinctly personal, yet existentially universal journey is the music of Arvo Pärt.

Triin Ojari's interview with Enrique Sobejano, the architect of the Arvo Pärt Centre. The interview was first published on 19 January 2021 in the newspaper Postimees.

Published by the Arvo Pärt Centre, the graphic novel about Arvo Pärt, Between Two Sounds, by artist and illustrator Joonas Sildre, is now available in German. The publishing house Voland & Quist, based in Berlin and Dresden, recently published Zwischen Zwei Tönen. Aus dem Leben des Arvo Pärt was translated into German by Maximilian Murmann.

Until now, scientific literature dedicated to Arvo Pärt’s work has been published mainly in the field of musicology, and more recently also in theology, but the new collection of articles Arvo Pärt: Sounding the Sacred can be considered an ambitious interdisciplinary publication that combines the discourses of different fields.