www.arvopart.info

Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir

DANIEL REUSS (principal conductor)

The Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir is a full-time professional choir, founded in 1981 by Tõnu Kaljuste, who was succeeded as artistic director and chief conductor by Paul Hillier, and subsequently by Daniel Reuss. Their repertoire ranges from Gregorian chants to late baroque and 20th century music.

Estonian choral music has great importance to them, especially the works of Arvo Pärt and Veljo Tormis, with whom the choir collaborated closely. Many of Pärt's choral works are written specifically with their distinctive Slavic sound in mind.

The Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir has had the pleasure to work with distinguished conductors including Claudio Abbado, Helmuth Rilling, Sir David Willcocks, Eric Ericson, Ivan Fisher, Nëeme Järvi, Paavo Järvi and Andrew Lawrence King.

The Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir gives 50 to 60 concerts every year, half of them in Estonia and half abroad. Recent concert tours have taken the choir to the USA, Canada, Japan, Australia and throughout Europe.

The EPCC has also made numerous recordings, mainly for the ECM and Harmonia Mundi labels. These have routinely received high acclaim from leading music critics all worldwide. The choir’s recordings have been nominated four times for Grammy awards. With ECM, they have recorded a great number of Arvo Pärt's compositions, such as the Kanon Pokajanen in 1998.

In the summer of 2002 the EPCC and Paul Hillier launched a number of projects on Harmonia Mundi: a 3-year project called "Baltic Voices", to explore the breadth and depth of choral music from the countries around the Baltic Sea. It focuses primarily on the mainstream tradition of the past hundred years, but also includes music from earlier periods, and newly commissioned works from younger composers. Baltic Voices I was released in October 2002, and Baltic Voices II in August 2004.

www.epcc.ee | www.danielreuss.com

The Hilliard Ensemble

DAVID JAMES (countertenor)
ROGERS COVEY-CRUMP (tenor)
STEVEN HARROLD (tenor)
GORDON JONES (baritone)

The Hilliard Ensemble is one of the world's finest male a capella ensembles, specialising in both early and contemporary classical music. Their style and high level of musicianship engage the listener as much in medieval and renaissance repertoire as in works especially written for the group by living composers.

Their name is taken from the English miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard (c.1547-1619), and is perhaps not incidentally related to that of former member Paul Hillier, who provided much of the early program planning before moving to the United States. Based in the United Kingdom, the ensemble's historical contribution to the recorded discography of early music is unparalleled.

The ensemble's repertory is extensive, given the large number of scores available for ATTB ensembles. Their schedule of concerts is busy and varied, with around one hundred performances every year. Its substantial following in Europe, is increased by regular visits to Japan, the United States and Canada.

The group's reputation as an early music ensemble dates from the 1980s and its series of highly successful records for EMI (many of which are now re-released on Virgin), but from the start the group has paid equal attention to new music. Their 1988 recording of Arvo Pärt's Passio began a fruitful relationship with both Arvo Pärt and the Munich-based record company ECM, which continued with their recording of Arvo Pärt's Litany, released in August 1996.

The group has recently commissioned other composers from the Baltic States, including Veljo Tormis and Erkki-Sven Tüür, adding to a rich repertoire of new music written for the Ensemble by Gavin Bryars, Heinz Holliger, John Casken, James MacMillan, Elena Firsova and others. The Hillard Ensemble hold annual summer schools, where the group provides for a composer-in-residence; past holders of this post have included Ivan Moody, Piers Hellawell, Barry Guy and Gavin Bryars. Many of these composers are represented on the ECM double album A Hilliard Songbook.

During the early part of 2000 they released In Paradisum. They toured the UK, Hungary and Germany with Jan Garbarek, and had another successful Hilliard Summer School, based for the first time in Germany. They were resident at the Edinburgh International Festival, where they gave a number of concerts. Autumn 2001 saw the successful release of their most recent ECM collaboration, Morimur, with the German violinist Christoph Poppen and soprano Monika Mauch. Based on the research of Prof. Helga Thoene, it is a unique interweaving of Bach's Partita in D minor for solo violin with a selection of his Chorale verses crowned by the epic Ciaconna, which unites both instrumentalist and vocalists.

www.hilliardensemble.demon.co.uk

Polyphony

STEPHEN LAYTON (conductor)

Created by Stephen Layton in 1986, Polyphony are an oustanding choral group, who have performed and recorded regularly to wide critical acclaim throughout the UK and abroad.

Polyphony give annual performances of Bach's St John Passion and Handel's Messiah at St John's Smith Square, London. These have become notable events in London's music calendar and have been broadcast by BBC Radio 3.

Their debut on the BBC Proms was in 1995, with Pärt's Passion According to St John, and Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. Polyphony premiered Schnittke's Symphony No. 2 with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall, and also premiered works by Arvo Pärt in 2003 and by John Tavener in 2004 in honour of his 60th birthday. Recent concerts abroad have taken Polyphony to France, Spain, Brazil, Denmark and Hungary.

Polyphony have extensively recorded with Hyperion, including The Second Coming with works by Tavener, Coronation Te Deum by Walton, Seven Last Words from the Cross by McMillan, and their latest release Cloudburst by Eric Whitacre.

They won a Gramophone Award in 2001 with the album Sacred and Profane of works by Britten. A second Gramophone Award for Best of Category (Choral) came in 2004 for Triodion, their première recording of works by Arvo Pärt. In 2005 the group received a Grammy Award nomination for Lux Aeterna of works by Morten Lauridsen.

www.polyphony.co.uk | www.stephenlayton.com

Tallinn Chamber Orchestra

TÕNU KALJUSTE (principal conductor)

The Tallinn Chamber Orchestra was founded in 1993 by the conductor Tõnu Kaljuste. The orchestra includes outstanding musicians, who often perform as soloists or with other orchestras worldwide.

In 1993, together with the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, they released Te Deum, a CD with works by Arvo Pärt, for ECM records. This recording received enormous acclaim by the critics and was one of the best-selling contemporary classical music albums.

Three years later, in 1996, they released Litany, also by Arvo Pärt, in collaboration with the Hilliard Ensemble, the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra and, once again, with the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir. In the same year Crystallisatio was released, with works by Erkki-Sven Tüür.

In 2001 the orchestra released Neenia, music for strings by Heino Eller, which had been recorded at the Estonian Concert Hall in 1999.

The Tallinn Chamber Orchestra has a very close relationship with the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, having performed together in a great number of prestigious music festivals, such as the Bremen Music Festival in 1998, and the Huddersfield Festival of Contemporary Music also in 1998.

The orchestra’s repertoire is the result of a long collaboration with many prestigious conductors from all over the world. Juha Kangas from Finland, Richard Tognetti from Australia, Terje Tonnesen from Norway, Patrick Strub from Germany, Valentin Zhuk from Netherlands, Silvio Barbato from Italy, Samuel Wong from Canada, Tarmo Leinatamm, Eri Klas, Olari Elts, Paul Mägi, Vello Pähn and Kristjan Järvi from Estonia have all worked with the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra.

www.filharmoonia.ee