News

In September 2005, a 14-part radio programme about Arvo Pärt premiered on Klassikaraadio. Making it took a full year, and contributing to its completion was the composer himself, along with dozens and dozens of people appearing in the broadcast.

The Arvo Pärt Centre has published a book by Hieromonk Raphael (Noica), Conversations in a monastery, that is based on public talks given by Fr. Raphael at the monastery of St. John the Baptist in Essex, England. The transcripts of Fr. Raphael’s talks can be considered as an introduction to the spiritual heritage of St. Silouan the Athonite and St. Sophrony the Athonite.

Irena Veisaitė, an outstanding Lithuanian literary and theatre scholar, the long-standing President of the Open Society in Lithuania Foundation, lecturer and theatre critic, has passed away. Arvo Pärt: “Dear Irena, my little musical dedication to your daughter – Für Alina – is the seal of our unity and love which will always keep us connected.”

The Spanish architects and the Arvo Pärt Centre have collaborated to publish a book of photographs and essays titled Arvo Pärt Center & Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos: A Common Denominator. The book is published by the German architecture publishers ArchiTangle. The presentation at 3pm on 7 December 2020 will be live streamed from the Arvo Pärt Centre via the Estonian Public Broadcasting culture portal.

The world premiere of Arvo Pärt’s Für Jan van Eyck will take place on 22 September in Ghent, Belgium. The initiative for creating this piece came from the Belgian choir Collegium Vocale Gent, and it was commissioned by the City of Ghent, who has dedicated the year 2020 to celebrating Jan van Eyck.

On 14 September in Novosibirsk (Russia), the world premiere of a new arrangement of Arvo Pärt’s La Sindone for violin and orchestra will be performed by the Novosibirsk Philharmonic Orchestra and the solo violinist Vadim Repin.

2010. aastal Pärdi pidunädalatest alguse saanud Pärdi päevadega tähistab Nargenfestival septembris Arvo Pärdi 85. sünnipäeva mitme teose uusversiooniga nii helilooja enda kui teiste seades, mis pole varem Eestis kõlanud.

The Arvo Pärt Centre and the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre announce that due to the continued spread of Covid-19 and related travel restrictions, the international academic conference “Arvo Pärt – Texts and Contexts” scheduled for October this year will be postponed by one year. The conference will take place next year, 15–16 October.

Annum per annum. The birthdays arrive with increasing relentlessness. It seems extraordinary that the Arvo Pärt Centre, so recently a dream project, is already celebrating its first decade. Or that Arvo himself, young at heart and wise in time, is about to reach the venerable age of 85. Almost forty years have passed since we

27–30 August Arvo Pärt Centre invites viewers to the tenth edition of Arvo Pärt Centre Film Nights, presenting screenings that introduce particular aspects of Arvo Pärt’s work and his concert music in films to a wider audience.

In Estonian cultural life, the years ending with five or ten have turned out to be years of musical festivities, as we celebrate in turns the anniversaries of two masters, internationally best-known and beloved Estonian composers Veljo Tormis (1930-2017) and Arvo Pärt (b.1935). This year marks another anniversary of Veljo Tormis who would have turned 90 on August 7.

For the first time, the Orthodox world will be celebrating 11 July as the memorial day of Archimandrite Sophrony, the founder of the Patriarchal Stavropegic Monastery of St. John the Baptist in Essex, who passed away on this day in 1993. In November 2019, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople canonised Fr. Sophrony, naming him St.